Community Grant Partnerships: Kanlungan
Kanlungan are a consortium of 12 community-based organisations working closely together for the welfare and interests of the Filipino and other migrant communities in Britain. They have been in the community for 26 years and their services and programmes have exponentially increased over the past few years as a result of the COVID pandemic.
The majority of people they support are professional workers such as nurses and domestic workers, both of which are predominantly women. The most common issues are those around domestic violence and domestic workers that are the victims of human trafficking.
As Kanlungan Director Andrea Martinez comments:
Part of the CGP funding provides direct and immediate financial support for vulnerable women leaving their partner and move toward living independently. It is so helpful to be able to cover one-off costs like hiring a van to move someone out of a refuge which we couldn’t have funded before. We are also able to provide one-on-one mental health support as well as group support for our women service users. Many of them are single mothers who need psychosocial support, including the opportunity to meet other women in similar situations who can provide them with social support. Before the funding, when a woman was fleeing her husband they were just sent to a refuge centre which was usually bare – not even kitchen utensils, so we had to ask members of the community to donate. Now we can help them directly in a number of ways.