**Trustees' Annual Report for the period** ||Period start date|Period start date|||Period end date|Period end date|| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| ||01|April|2020||31|March|2021| |**From**||||**To**|||| ## Section A Reference and administration details |**Charity name**
**Other names charity is known by**
**Registered charity number (if any)**
**Charity's principal address**|Across Borders|| |---|---|---| |||| |||| |||| ||1170882|| |||| ||20 Ringlet Drive, East Leake|| ||Loughborough|| ||Leicestershire|| ||**Postcode**|LE12 6XU| ## **Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity** ||1
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20|**Trustee name**|**Office (if any)**|**Dates acted if not for whole**
**year **|**Name of person (or body) entitled**
**to appoint trustee (ifany)**| |---|---|---|---|---|---| |||Fiona Cameron|Chair||| |||Rosie Watt|Secretary||| |||Temitope Yusuf|Treasurer|appointed - 7 November
2020|| |||Emma Goldie|||| |||Wafa Sulieman||appointed - 19 August
2020|| |||Abuzar Abagna||9 September 2020|| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| ||||||| |||**Names of the trustees for the charity, if any, (for example, any custodian trustees)**|||| |||**Name**||**Dates acted if not for whole year**|| ||||||| ||||||| **TAR** March **2012** 1 ## **Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)** **Type of adviser Name Address** ## **Name of chief executive or names of senior staff members (Optional information)** ## **Section B Structure, governance and management** ## **Description of the charity’s trusts** Type of governing document Constitution - (eg. trust deed, constitution) Charitable Incorporated Organisation How the charity is constituted - (eg. trust, association, company) Trustee selection methods Other trustees - (eg. appointed by, elected by) ## **Additional governance issues (Optional information)** You **may choose** to include additional information, where relevant, about: Across Borders works in partnership with the University of Nottingham and St Andrew’s Refugee Services in Cairo. - policies and procedures adopted for the induction and training of trustees; - the charity’s organisational structure and any wider network with which the charity works; - relationship with any related parties; - trustees’ consideration of major risks and the system and procedures to manage them. ## **Section C Objectives and activities** **Summary of the objects of the charity set out in its governing document** (1) To advance the human rights of and relieve poverty of migrants and refugees in the Middle East and North Africa (Across Borders engages with refugee and migrant service providers operating in the MENA region, which we define as Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen.) (2) in particular but not exclusively by working in partnership with **TAR** March **2012** 2 |**Summary of the main**
**activities undertaken for the**
**public benefit in relation to**
**these objects (include within**
**this section the statutory**
**declaration that trustees have**
**had regard to the guidance**
**issued by the Charity**
**Commission on public**
**benefit)**|organisations that provide advice, training and assistance in the Middle
East and North Africa, including but not limited to St Andrews Refugee
Services.
(3) To advance education and promote racial harmony for the public
benefit by providing information, sharing best practice and raising
awareness on issues relating to migration and refugees.| |---|---| ||This year started with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
lock down in March affected the remote legal project we run in
partnership with the University of Nottingham, as well as the work of our
partner organisation in Egypt, and as the effects of the pandemic began
to be felt across the world, Across Borders switched its focus to raising
funds for StARS COVID response.
As we all learned to manage in the “new normal”, our legal project started
up again remotely, and we have just trained our second cohort of
students.
In September last year we went through a strategic planning process with
the help of Alice Johnson of CCIP which helped us to develop our
priorities for the coming year, and as a result of which we re-wrote our
Vision and Mission for the organisation.
We have also been lucky enough to recruit two fantastic comms
volunteers, Sharon Natt and Julia Dezso who have worked hard on
managing our social media and who have been instrumental in building
up our reputation and helping us with fundraising. We have also recruited
three new trustees to the board, which has greatly increased our
capacity.
In addition, we received funding from the National Lottery, Awards for All
to set up a new project, Real Resettlement which aims to better support
refugees from Egypt resettled to the UK.| ## **Additional details of objectives and activities (Optional information)** **TAR** March **2012** 3 You **may choose** to include further statements, where relevant, about: - policy on grantmaking; - policy programme related investment; - contribution made by volunteers. ## Section D Achievements and performance **TAR** March **2012** 4 ## Section D Achievements and erformance p **Summary of the main achievements of the charity during the year** Please see below **TAR** March **2012** 5 ## **Section E Financial review** Across borders has a policy in which three months of running costs for **Brief statement of the** the charities activities should be held in the case of the charity winding **charity’s policy on reserves** down. **Details of any funds materially in deficit** ## **Further financial review details (Optional information)** You **may choose** to include additional information, where relevant about: A grant has been received from the National Lottery Awards for All. Other funds have been raised through individual donations. - the charity’s principal sources of funds (including any fundraising); - how expenditure has supported the key objectives of the charity; - investment policy and objectives including any ethical investment policy adopted. ## **Section F Other optional information** ## **Section G Declaration** **The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above.** **Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees** **Signature(s) Full name(s)** Fiona Cameron **Position (eg Secretary, Chair,** Chair **etc)** **Date** 09/01/2022 **TAR** March **2012** 6 ## **Trustees' Annual Report and Financial Statements for the Period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021** **TAR** March **2012** 7 ## **Trustees’ Annual Report** Fiona Cameron – Chair Temitope Yusuf - Treasurer (date appointed - 7 November 2020) Rosie Watt – Secretary Emma Goldie Wafa Suleiman (date appointed - 19 August 2020) Abuzar Abagna (date appointed - 9 September 2020) ## **Report from the Chair** Across Borders was founded in December 2016 to promote refugee rights using refugee perspectives to support programming for refugees so that people can meaningfully access their rights and entitlements. We do this through capacity building, supporting refugee-led organisations and sharing good practice across borders. The objectives of the charity are as follows: (1) To advance the human rights of and relieve poverty of migrants and refugees in the Middle East and North Africa (Across Borders engages with refugee and migrant service providers operating in the MENA region, which we define as Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen.) (2) In particular, but not exclusively by working in partnership with organisations provide advice, training and assistance in the Middle East and North Africa, including but not limited to St Andrew’s Refugee Services. (3) To advance education and promote racial harmony for public benefit by providing information, sharing best practice and raising awareness on issues relating to migration and refugees This year started with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lock down in March affected the remote legal project we run in partnership with the University of Nottingham, as well as the work of our partner organisation in Egypt, and as the effects of the pandemic began to be felt across the world, Across Borders switched its focus to raising funds for StARS COVID response. As we all learned to manage in the “new normal”, our legal project started up again remotely, and we have just trained our second cohort of students. In September last year we went through a strategic planning process with the help of Alice Johnson of CCIP which helped us to develop our priorities for the coming year, and as a result of which we re-wrote our Vision and Mission for the organisation. We have also been lucky enough to recruit two fantastic comms volunteers, Sharon Natt and Julia Dezso who have worked hard on managing our social media and who have been instrumental in building up our reputation and helping us with fundraising. We have also recruited three new trustees to the board, which has greatly increased our capacity. In addition, we received funding from the National Lottery, Awards for All to set up a new project, Real Resettlement which aims to better support refugees from Egypt resettled to the UK. ## **Remote Legal Clinic** ## **Introduction** The Remote Legal Clinic project, which launched in 2019, trains law students in the UK so that they can support St Andrew’s Refugee Services’ (StARS) Refugee Legal Aid Department (RLAD) in Cairo with its caseload. The innovative model is a partnership between Nottingham University and StARS and provides law **TAR** March **2012** 8 students with an opportunity to train in International Refugee Law and gain real-life experience of practicing law as well as increasing the capacity of access to legal aid for StARS’ clients in Cairo. Being recognised as a refugee in Egypt provides for protection against detention and deportation and without registration documents individuals are not able to access medical services or education, or services such as registering a birth. RLAD is currently the only service that provides legal aid for people seeking asylum in Egypt. The service includes access to information and counselling and where representation is considered to make a significant difference in a case’s determination, RLAD provides full representation in the refugee status determination, protection, or resettlement process. The remote legal clinic supports this important work by increasing RLAD’s capacity. As a remote-working model, the project isn’t affected by the security situation and travel restrictions which can impact the supply of staff and interns at RLAD, and provides an alternative to those who want to support this work but don’t have the means to travel to Egypt. As well, complex regulation in the UK doesn’t allow students to practice law and so this opportunity is highly desirable because it allows students to apply newly acquired legal knowledge and skills in international refugee law. ## **What’s happened so far?** Two cohorts of university students have received training (in 2019 and 2020) which enables them to work on cases with support from their tutor along with remote guidance from lawyers in Egypt. The 2019 training was delivered in-person by the RLAD Refugee Status Determination Coordinator. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic this approach wasn’t feasible for the 2020 cohort and so the training was instead delivered by Nottingham University, using existing materials previously developed. Once the students have completed the training they are ready to take on one case per week. Following a first instance interview in Cairo, the RLAD coordinator preps the case, pulling together the precedents that the students will use, and gets these as well as the interview transcript to the University lead who reviews it ahead of sharing the materials with the students. The students then draft over the next few days, each taking on either research to corroborate the account or working on the legal argument. Their work is reviewed by their tutor and then returned to Cairo for finalisation ahead of submission to UNHCR. This process takes one week. During the first year of the project, Covid-19 brought severe disruption to Refugee Status Determination (RSD) services in Egypt with UNHCR pausing all its operations from March 2020. RSD has resumed in 2021 via a remote model but at reduced capacity and the workflow has been difficult to predict because advanced schedules aren’t shared with RLAD. RLAD has also had a resourcing issue because of travel restrictions in Egypt and the economic insecurity resulting from the pandemic. This work has been completed with generous funding from the Matrix Causes Fund. ## **What’s next?** We’re exploring the project model, looking to diversify the students’ workload so that they take on Resettlement work as well. This will mean that when the Refugee Status Determination workflow is lighter students will be able to pivot and work on protection work instead. For students this additional area of learning allows them to expand their knowledge base further. We’ve also applied for funds to consolidate the project’s training package. ## **Fundraising for StARS** Building on the fundraising efforts from FY 2019-20, we were able to help fundraise £9,717.86 via online donations throughout this financial year, of which £9,441.26 was done on behalf of St Andrews Refugee Services (StARS). These were from one-off donations and recurring donations from regular donors. All funds raised for StARS will be paid to them via bank transfer which will be used to fund the range of activities they provide. Due to the adverse impact of Covid-19, StARS has seen a large reduction in international aid and we are pleased this donation sum will go towards helping plug the much needed income gap. **TAR** March **2012** 9 ## **The Real Resettlement Project** Resettlement is now a key part of the UK immigration system. However, refugee resettlement is not always successful and much of this is predicated on the refugees’ understanding of what they can expect when they get in the UK. The main purpose of the resettlement project is to provide accurate information about the life in the UK, such information include education, employment, service providers etc, thereby, the newcomer refugees from Egypt should guide by this information to integrate easily into UK culture. These guidelines will be provided by refugees who were previously resettled and who are trained former StARS staff as well and the guidelines will be reachable in drive with /or website. Further, the program is led by two refugee coordinators who used to work at StARS. Experience of refugees in supporting their community and leading in managing their challenges was a successful experience in Egypt. We believe that refugees can support each other with the resources and training we provide. The program has two phases to work on, the first phase starting in Egypt through an awareness sessions to refugees lead by StARS and the second phase will start in the UK when the refugees arrived, then monitoring and follow up will take place until they settled and engage as needed with the future view that those refugees could be part of future support to other newcomers and the experience to be circled with across borders support in any training or support. The project is planned for one year starting from April 2021 to April 2022, by the end of the project, we would have a very good information system in place to help refugees to achieve their goals depending on available information, manage expectation, and set up a clear way to understand UK system, how it works and how they can engage in as they wish. ## **Plans for 2021/2022** We hope to develop both the legal project and the resettlement project during the coming year, and to raise further funds to develop them. As part of the resettlement project, we hope to set up a network of resettled refugees in the UK, and to host an event, when conditions allow. We have already secured £10,000 grant funding from National Lottery from MidMarch 2021 which will fund the next 12 months’ activities within the resettlement project. We will be developing community training programmes, starting with a community interpreting training which will be delivered in partnership with Voices in Refuge (www.voicesinrefuge.com). If you are interested in volunteering for the organisation or becoming a trustee, please contact us on info@acrossborders.org.uk. If you would like to donate to StARS, or to Across Borders please go to https://www.acrossborders.org.uk/donate. **TAR** March **2012** 10 ## **Accounts** ||**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21|**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21|**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21|**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21|**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21|**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21|**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21|**Across Borders**
**1170882**
**Receipts andpayments accounts**
**For the**
**period from**
01-Apr-20
**To**
31-Mar-21||**CC16**
**a**| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| |**Section A Receipts and payments**||||||||||| ||**Unrestricted**
**funds**||**Restricted**
**funds**||**Endowment**
**funds**||**Total**|**funds**||**Last year**| ||**to the nearest**||**to the nearest**||**to the nearest**||**to the**|**nearest**||**to the**| ||**£**||**£**||**£**|||**£**||**nearest £**| |**A1 Receipts**||||||||||| |Souter Trust|**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**3,000**| |National Lottery|**-**||**10,000**||**-**||**10,000**|||**-**| |Individual donations|**277**||**9,441**||**-**||**9,718**|||**789**| |Other|**81**||**-**||**-**||**81**|||**-**| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**-**| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**-**| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**-**| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**-**| |**_Sub total_**_(Gross income for_||||||||||| |_AR)_|**358**||**19,441**||**-**||**19,799**|||**3,789**| |||||||||||| |**A2 Asset and investment**||||||||||| |**sales, (see table).**||||||||||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**-**| |**_Sub total_**|
**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**-**| |||||||||||| |**_Total receipts_**|**358**||**19,441**||**-**||**19,799**|||**3,789**| |**A3 Payments**||||||||||| |Volunteer expenses||||||||||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**1,069**| |Consultancy fees||||||||||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||**-**| |Donation platform costs||||||||||| ||**114**||**-**||**-**||**114**|||**-**| |Website maintenance costs||||||||||| ||**202**||**-**||**-**||**202**|||**209**| ||**-**||||**-**||**-**|||**-**| |||||||||||| |**TAR**|||11||||||March**2012**|| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**| |**_Sub total_**|**316**||**-**||**-**||**316**||**1,278**| |**A4 Asset and investment**|||||||||| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| |**purchases, (see table)**|||||||||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||| |**_Sub total_**|||||||||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**| |**_Total payments_**|**316**||**-**||**-**||**316**||**1,278**| |**_Net of_**|||||||||| |**_receipts/(payments)_**|**42**||**19,441**||**-**||**19,483**||**2,511**| |**A5 Transfers between funds**|||||||||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**| |**A6 Cash funds last year end**|||||||||| ||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**| |**_Cash funds this year end_**|**42**||**19,441**||**-**||**19,483**||**2,511**| ## **Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period** |**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**42**
**-**
**-**
**42**
OK
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**|**Restricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**19,601**
**2,351**
**-**
**21,952**
Agreement
Error
**Restricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**|**Endowme**
**nt funds**
**to nearest £**| |---|---|---| |||**-**| |||**-**| |||**-**| |||**-**| |||OK| |||**Endowme**
**nt funds**
**to nearest £**| |**-**|**-**|**-**| |**-**|**-**|**-**| |**-**|**-**|**-**| |**-**|**-**|**-**| |**-**|**-**|**-**| |**-**|**-**|**-**| **Categories Details B1 Cash funds** Cash in Bank Cash in PayPal account _**Total cash funds**_ (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) ## **Details** **B2 Other monetary assets** **TAR** March **2012** 12 ## **B3 Investment assets** ## **Details** **Fund to Current Cost which asset value (optional) belongs (optional) - - - - - - - - - -** ## **B4 Assets retained for the charity’s own use** ## **B5 Liabilities** **Fund to Current Cost which asset value (optional) Details belongs (optional) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Fund to Amount due When due which (optional) (optional) liability Details relates - - - - -** Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees Signature Date of Print Name approval 09/01/202 Fiona Cameron 2 Signed, on behalf of the Trustees, Fiona Cameron **Independent Examiner:** Rachel Chiu **TAR** March **2012** 13