Refugee Action Scotland Community Story
By Re-Act
This story, from Re-Act is part of a series of community stories from organisations receiving funding from the Boost fund in partnership with STV Appeal. The stories focus on how people across Scotland are working together to support their communities.
ReAct (Refugee Action Scotland) is a volunteer run charity based in Edinburgh, that supports refugees as they arrive and settle into their new lives in Scotland.
ReAct (Refugee Action Scotland) is a volunteer run charity based in Edinburgh, that supports refugees as they arrive and settle into their new lives in Scotland.
Anne, from the Corra Community Grants team visited ReAct at their warehouse in Granton and met volunteers Maggie and Mike. Maggie and Mike helped set the organisation up in 2015 in response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria and organise the welcome side of the project. They work with the council to learn when new families will be arriving, coordinate collection of donations and the delivery of Welcome Packs to families.
Welcome Packs
Maggie is responsible for making welcome packs for children and young people arriving in Edinburgh. To date, Re-Act have distributed nearly 1000 packs. Each child receives a backpack filled with warm clothes, stationery, toiletries, and a welcome booklet which is produced in different languages. Copies of the booklet are available below.
“The Welcome Packs went down so well with the young people – as they always do. They are a brilliantly specific and practical form of support and a wonderfully tangible sign of welcome.”
Alistair Dinnie, Refugee and Migration Programme Manager, City of Edinburgh Council.
Support for families and young people
Re-Act offer a range of other support to families. When we visited, Mike was busy attaching stabilisers to a kid’s bike for a family who came to Edinburgh from Afghanistan.
Re-Act volunteers Maggie and Sawsan also run a weekly playgroup in Craigmillar on Saturday afternoons for New Scot children. This vibrant club is much more than a playgroup. It is a place where women chat and laugh as they prepare snacks in the kitchen whilst teenagers, who once attended the playgroup as children, now help with a range of craft and sports activities. We spoke to women from Syria who have been supported by ReAct since they first came to Edinburgh several years before. Now settled in different parts of Edinburgh they travel across the city every week to bring their children to the club and to meet the friends they have made.
Re-Act offer a range of further support such as information on voting rights, a women’s computer class group, and a homework club. If you’d like to learn more about the work Re-Act do, visit their website at or follow them on twitter or facebook.