On July 11th 2023 Powys County Council Cabinet approved a proposal to join the City of Sanctuary local authority network and begin the application process to become a Council  of Sanctuary. .  At the Council meeting on 20th July ,there was an opportunity to celebrate this with councillors, other local support groups, officers, resettlement team  members and some EYST support workers. Lawrence Mike and Ailsa attended on behalf of HBTSR together with our display boards giving details of other support groups and also of our group and some of the work we’ve been doing with local schools. With Mike’s encouragement we placed our table and boards right by the coffee area and set up our Laptop with videos although once people arrived there wasn’t really space to see it.

it was a great occasion to celebrate and the culmination of some great work and to look forward to building a strategic plan    together

The photos above show the  information boards and the photos below show the boards in situ and a photo of representatives of groups and Meg Lewis  resettlement officer and the two EYST support workers.

The magnificent cake was provided by Cllr David Meredith.

And Tim, Val and Adil met the King and Queen as honoured guests of the Cathedral on the same day! .

At the Royal Welsh Show 24th to 27th July we were included in the Powys Pavilion to show our boards with  information about the voluntary groups supporting people seeking sanctuary , about HBTSR and Schools of Sanctuary and about the Oral History project coordinated by Beacons for Ukraine.  You can listen here. There was also a celebration of the Powys resolution  to become a county of sanctuary and we were able to talk about our group and the work we’ve been doing with schools. Mark Williams from Llangors primary school spoke about how the freedom of the new Welsh Curriculum has allowed for work on welcome and sanctuary to be more easily included in classwork.