No. 6 September 2009.  Newsletter Welcome HomeLess

 Welcome HomeLess?           

Optimism, optimism, optimism…

We have now reached September, and as we are moving closer to autumn, we are also moving closer to the beginning of 2010 – EU’s Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. As most of you know, we have not had the luck we were hoping for, concerning funding and finding sponsors, and even though we have not given up, we have reached the time, where we need to know how many of you, who still want to be a part of Welcome HomeLess.

Welcome HomeLess will travel to Brussels for the exhibition at the European Parliament in late January or early February, and we are still applying for support from various funds, and we still believe that we will receive some funding during the next months.
Concerning the EU funding for the Year 2010, we are still waiting for the pools to be released, which should happen in September.

As you can all see we are struggling, and we are fighting to raise money for Welcome HomeLess. But in order for us to get a more clear idea of how many of you, who are still interested in joining in, we need you to send us an email.
However, we need to make a safety clause. We still believe that we can find the money to cover most of the costs of the exhibition, but we need you to be able to contribute with approximately € 1.000 per organization for the transportation costs.

Let us know what you think

 This was not a part of the original idea, and if you still want to be a part of Welcome HomeLess even with this safety clause, the amount will of cause be reduced according to the amount of money we can find from funds and sponsors.
But we need you to tell us, if this is okay with you, or if we need to postpone the exhibition, until the financial crisis has ended.

If you are not able to pay € 1.000 – or hopefully less – you are more than welcome to stay on the mailing list and check the website once in a while for up-dates. Should we be so lucky to be able to cover all the costs, you are also more than welcome to be a part of the exhibition again.

We are really sorry that Welcome HomeLess at this point is not what we had hoped for. But we are still being optimistic and working hard to find the funding.

Write us an e-mail at welcome@udenfor.dk

While we are waiting

During the time we have spent waiting for the NIB-pools to be released, we have applied for as many funds as we possibly can. This means that we are know waiting in suspense, and hoping that soon we will get some funding for Welcome HomeLess.

We have changed the wording of your applications this time, so that the many applications are aimed at smaller parts of the exhibition and thus aimed at getting smaller amounts of money. Hopefully this mean that we will get more positive responses from the many funds, and that the many smaller sums of money will become a lot of funding for Welcome HomeLess.

A slow process

The NIB-pools regarding the EU Year 2010 was supposed to be released in Denmark in late May, but there has been a lot of disagreements on a ministerial level concerning whether the money from the European Commission was to be placed in the Ministry of Social Affairs or in the Ministry of Employment.
However the pools ended up being placed in the Ministry of Social Affairs, and hopefully we can apply for funding in the weeks to come. We will keep you up-dated on that too.

Britta Thomsen supports Welcome HomeLess

Everything seems to be going well in relation to the exhibition in the European Parliament. Welcome HomeLess has now been officially invited by the Danish Member of the European Parliament Mrs. Britta Thomsen.

Britta Thomsen’s key issues in her political work are among others equality and immigration. In her website she states that equality plays a part in many areas of life, and often without us being aware of it. Britta Thomsen believes that it is necessary to create equality between all social groups in our society, because equality actually is equivalent to respect for every individual regardless of sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or handicaps.   

Another one of Britta Thomsen’s key issues is immigration, which she believes to be necessary in many ways. Immigration is not a new phenomenon, because people have always migrated. But as the world has opened up, more and more people are migrating in search and hope of a better life. This is not something to be concerned about according to Britta Thomsen.  She believes that in the years to come, there will be a need for more labour. However, all immigration must happen in a proper and justifiable way in order to prevent social and cultural problems to occur.

During the weeks to come, the many details concerning the exhibition of Welcome HomeLess will be made clear, in order to create an interesting and spectacular opening of the touring exhibition in Brussels.

Read more about MEP Britta Thomsen here.   

Welcome HomeLess on Facebook

Thank you to all of you, who have joined our Welcome HomeLess group on Facebook.
You are all very welcome to post discussion topics or messages on the site, and we will make sure to keep you up-dated with photos etc.

Those of you who haven’t joined the facebook group yet, you can still join of the group, if you are a part of the Facebook community, please click here

We look forward to 'see' many more of you on Facebook.

Best Regards,                                               

The team behind Welcome HomeLess.

You are always more that welcome to contact us at: welcome@udenfor.dk and please visit www.welcomehomeless.org