Spotlight on Kanlungan – supporting migrant communities through the cost of living crisis

The community grant partnerships (CGP) is a strategic initiative to help us shift power for grant decision-making to local community organisations, the majority of which are led by and for women. Smallwood provides a block grant including overhead costs, an operational toolkit and evaluation support to the partner organisation which then awards grants to individual women integrated with their specialist support services.

Our latest Spotlight article features an interview with Kanlungan Director Andrea Martinez.

Can you please introduce 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. We have been in the community for 26 years and our services and programmes have exponentially increased over the past few years as a result of the COVID pandemic.

The majority of people we support are professional workers such as nurses and domestic workers, both of which are predominantly women. They come to us with a range of issues but the most common ones are those around domestic violence and domestic workers that are the victims of human trafficking.

Our social media has helped a lot as Filipinos are so savvy about it. I think we have the highest percentage of Facebook users so the word about us spread and we were able to network with different councils who now refer Filipino women to us. 

Our consortium consists of member organisations that not only work with their own communities but come together for many projects like the campaign for the Regularisation of Migrant Domestic Workers and our project for women who are victims of domestic violence (Violence Against Women and Girls).

Our support ranges from small grants that come from our funders, welfare and employment advice, immigration support, campaigns and advocacy, regular in-person meet-ups, mental health support, legal advice, zoom group calls and we also run workshops on suggested topics usually run by members of the Filipino community who work in those fields.

What is the impact of the cost of living crisis on the women you work with?
The biggest impact we’ve seen is that the increase in costs like rent is not in alignment with the increase in financial support women are getting from social services. Our members can barely budget as after their rent – there is so little left to pay for everything else. Another issue is the rise of transport costs. We offer in-person meetups once a month but some members are hampered by transport costs when even coming from North London to South London. This obviously impacts the support we can offer.

How did you first come into contact with Smallwood?
We started working with Smallwood through the Women Thrive Fund. This is where our relationship began and where our Blooming Roses project was funded. During the pandemic, issues around domestic violence increased and this led us to discover a group of migrants who had come over to join their mostly British or European spouses. We knew about the history of Filipino brides but not in the numbers we saw during the pandemic. These women, who have only just met their husbands, were suddenly staying with them 24/7 without knowing anyone else and so were in complete isolation. A lot of these women were also abandoned when they became new mothers so they were very vulnerable. 

With the funding for Blooming Roses we could help them find a safe refuge. More recently we have joined the Smallwood Trust as a Community Grant Partner. This allows us to provide women in the Blooming Roses project with small grants to help with the transition to independence as well as help them claim the support they were entitled to through the fact that their new child had a British or European father.

Sustainability is a big part of our thinking as it’s not in Filipino culture to rely on government support so we also promoted financial resilience through workshops around livelihoods and financial management. 

The project was called Blooming Roses as it is about women, who are on the road to recovery, blooming again.

Part of the money from the Women Thrive Fund went towards launching mental health campaigns, can you tell us more about that?
In the Philippines, mental health services are very expensive and one of the cultural barriers is that sufferers feel an embarrassment to their family and community if something is wrong with them and so they keep it to themselves. I believe that Filipinos are naturally more resilient and more risk-taking by nature. Just imagine going to a place like the UK where everyone is a stranger. They really have a strength of character but, unfortunately, those traits make them prone to being exploited in the areas of sex working, human trafficking and modern slavery.

With the Smallwood funding, we can use social media to release information regularly about the mental health support available. We also use webinars for this and sometimes one of our organisations will put on mental health workshops. 

How has being a Smallwood CGP helped your members?
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.

If people want to support you, what is the best way to?
We welcome any donations and on our website you can choose which campaign you want your money to go to. You can also become a Community Host which is a programme where people with a spare room in their house can give one of our members – especially those who are fleeing a domestic violence situation or abusive employers – a place to stay for a certain period of time.

We would also like ambassadors and people who have creative ideas to help increase awareness and raise funding for our work.

You can find more on Kanlungan and their work by visiting their website.