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2022-03-31-accounts

MASS MASS Action Annual Report April 2021- March 2022 Migrant and Asylum Seekers Solidarity Action 87 Broadway, Cambridge, CB3 9NQ. Charitable Incorporated Organisation Charity Number: 1177804

MASS Action Annual Report

April 2021 - March 2022

ABOUT MASS ACTION

MASS Action is a registered CIO that believes in collective action and solidarity for change. Our work centres the needs of migrants and asylum seekers by providing �nancial and logistical support through collaborations with projects that align with our core values. A big part of this is that projects are led by, or aim to centre and amplify the voices of those with lived experience of migration and asylum systems. We are proud to collaborate with projects that recognize the importance of community, build non-hierarchical relations and maintain �nancial transparency. As well as our work with partner projects, a priority for the association is advocating for political change and the free movement of people.

OUR MISSION

To support grassroots projects that provide digni�ed and sustainable initiatives for migrants and asylum seekers. To increase awareness of the social, economic, political and ecological factors which cause migration thereby challenging negative public perceptions on the movement of people.

CORE VALUES

HISTORY

MASS Action was founded by nine individuals who felt frustrated by the lack of access to funding for small grassroots initiatives doing impressive work with very little resources . We saw how hard it is to juggle running impactful projects alongside applying for funding and maintaining social media campaigns. Donors, whether they are individuals making small donations, or big trusts giving out grants, are usually attracted to large scale projects with quantitative results. We can understand this, but we also felt there was a huge need to increase funding for projects that focus

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on social impact through building relationships and communities; where small donations have a big impact. We registered with the UK Charities Commission as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation in 2018 and since then have been working with various partner projects to provide funding to sustain their operations as well as logistical support and advice.

MEETING OUR OBJECTIVES

Our idea for about is based on an that we need �nancial bringing change understanding redistribution to projects who are facilitating sustainable and digni�ed initiatives as well as collective action violent This was central to the of the against migration policies. inception association, we wanted to advocate for a new way of viewing the movement of people to challenge and overcome negative discourse. In this past year of operations we have prioritised fundraising to provide stability for partner projects.

We achieve our objectives in two ways:

  1. First, by granting money to and fundraising in collaboration with projects we are either partnered to or consider within our supporting scope. We are holding an annual open call for funding applications in order to reach more projects. We are currently fundraising through grant applications as well as online fundraisers.

  2. Second, MASS Action raises awareness of issues around migration more broadly. We do this with regular posts on Facebook and Instagram, sharing reliable news sources and publishing longer informative social media posts that re�ect the reality of being a migrant or asylum seeker in the UK or more generally in Europe.

The trustees con�rm that they have referred to the guidance contained in the charity commission's general guidance on public bene�t when reviewing the trust’s aims and objectives in planning future activities.

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PROJECT FOCUS

Part of the functioning of MASS Action concerns support to partner projects in fundraising. We provide a platform through which projects can hold online fundraisers, claiming gift aid on all eligible UK donations. Furthermore projects can apply collaboratively for grants that require a UK charitable status for eligibility purposes. The following projects are out current partners:

Khora

Athens - Partner since 2018

Khora is a self-organised collective of individuals, registered as an association in Athens, Greece. It began in 2016 when a group of volunteers working in Lesvos came to Athens and opened a community centre. Contained within an eight-story building, Khora Community Centre provided a vast array of services that aimed to meet both short and long term needs of migrants, asylum seekers and locals in Athens. This included food, clothing, education, legal support, information sharing and signposting, safe spaces for children and women, creative workshops and a whole host of other events. More than anything, what Khora o�ered was a feeling of community, a friendly environment that welcomed everyone, without judgement or labels. Sadly the centre had to close down in 2018 due to building licensing issues. After a long search Khora now rents two new spaces in addition to the already existing Free Shop space. One of these new buildings houses the Khora Asylum Support team, a makerspace group called The Beehive, The United African Women Organisation and a music space. The other building houses the activities of the Khora Kitchen and Cafe.

Mazi Housing Project

Athens - Partner since 2018

Mazi is a housing project which provides a home to six displaced young men who are in Athens on their own and were previously homeless. Mazi, meaning ‘together’ in Greek, speaks to the sense of community and support central to the initiative. The project is aimed at a group that is often ignored by both governments and NGOs: young men. The project challenges cycles of dependency by empowering residents to overcome social exclusion through holistic and collaborative support. Without housing in Greece you cannot access vital services including non-emergency health care, registered employment, �nancial support, a bank account, public education, or even a public transport card. While minors are given a certain amount of support, many young individuals �nd themselves in a highly vulnerable position when they turn eighteen and are suddenly no longer able to access this support. A safe, secure house can provide protection not only from exposure to crime, violence, drug abuse and sexual exploitation whilst living on the streets but also allows these young men to go to classes, get a job, receive �nancial support and build basic autonomy.

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Play Up! (formerly Kids Klub)

Athens - Partner since 2018

Play Up! creates safe play and learning spaces inside informal living spaces in Athens. Play Up! consists of a team of volunteers who run daily play and learning sessions for children. The aim of Play Up! is to provide spaces (classrooms, family spaces, outside playgrounds), for children and their parents to come to play and to learn. Through the long term connections made within these family spaces, a supportive community of parents, children and volunteers is established.

Syrian Greek Youth Forum

Athens - Partner since 2019

The Syrian and Greek Youth Forum (SGYF) – an international activism movement in Athens, Greece. They work to support community-building activities, provide pathways to employment, and to contribute and participate in research to implement sustainable solutions for an inclusive society.

LGBT Unity

Glasgow - Partner since 2020

The LGBT Unity Glasgow group is a space where LGBTQ+ people navigating the asylum system, and people supporting them come together to share ideas, interact and to express their feelings. The group is only open to people who identify as LGBTQ+. LGBT UNITY Glasgow is supporting its members with food vouchers, mobile phone top-up vouchers and other essential items on a weekly basis especially to those who are destitute without any support while they are still in asylum process and those living at the hotels, and those with mental health issues.

Chamomile

Athens - Partner since 2021

Chamomile Housing Project provides holistic supportive accommodation and social support to previously homeless displaced people (refugees, asylum seekers, migrants) with psychosocial challenges with the �nal aim of independent living for all residents. Chamomile Housing Project grew out of Amigos de Ritsona Accommodation Project - an informal accommodation project that has been working with displaced people who have mental health challenges since 2017. They provided accommodation and connections to psychosocial support encouraging independent living throughout the program and with the aim of full independence from the project itself. In 2020 the opportunity emerged to expand the project both in numbers and scope. A formal partnership was cemented with Babel Day Centre (LINK) and in August 2020 they began taking referrals for a new program which provides housing, psychosocial support and material support. Eight apartments are currently operating; three more will open in the coming month.

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ACHIEVEMENTS

Capacity Building:

Projects Supported:

Outreach:

Collaboration with Thighs of Steel

Thighs of Steel (ToS) organises challenging physical bike rides with the aim of fundraising for refugee projects and organisations. Their main event, a relay from the UK to Athens, is Europe’s longest charity bike ride. In 2020 and 2021, ToS organised two successful UK-based, pandemic-friendly adventures. In 2022, they are back with another relay ride to Athens, this time leaving from Glasgow. Since 2016, ToS’s adventures have raised £532,223, more than half of which has been granted to Khora, a project in Athens.

For their upcoming 2022 ToS have been looking for a group to manage the logistics of the online fundraiser and the distribution of funds. Due to our mutual collaboration with Khora we started discussions regarding partnering with one another late in 2021 and signing a memorandum of understanding in 2022. The key commitments of our working relationship are as follows:

MASS Action commits to:

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MASS Action and Thighs of Steel will mutually agree the target or aims of each fundraising campaign, before it is launched. This could include:

The funds raised by ToS across the Summer of 2022 will be distributed in an open funding call in Autumn 2022 following a similar model to that carried out previously. ToS and MASS Action also agreed to ring-fence a proportion of the raised funds to go toward Khora’s running costs across 2022 and 2023.

Fundraisers Hosted

Miles on MASS fundraiser

Mazi and Chamomile Marathon Fundraiser

Khora Fundraiser

Push Back Against Bikes Fundraiser (PBAB)

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strategic litigation, primarily against illegal collective expulsions (‘push backs’). The Legal Centre is currently taking the Greek government before the European Court of Human Rights in order to put a stop to this barbaric practice, which the Greek authorities deny the very existence of.

Open Call Funding Grants- Spring 2022

In 2021 MASS Action applied for a grant to the Britford Bridge Trust for a £45000 2-year �exible grant in order to support our open funding call to projects working with displaced people. The grant application was accepted and we received the �rst instalment of the grant (£22500) in September of 2021. We launched an Open Funding Call in February 2022 which closed in March 2022. We are currently processing the 58 applications we received from projects based in the UK and Greece. Prior to the launch of the funding, MASS Action created promotional materials which were distributed through social media platforms and through our network. The application criteria was to from those entities that often to developed encourage applicants struggle access funding. The criteria and assessment method was to ensure a non-biased consideration of all designed incoming applications. The money distributed (£25000 total) through this funding call will be represented in the 2022-2023 annual report.

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RISK MANAGEMENT

: a new with of Steel the risk of a new Strategic Beginning partnership Thighs presents taking direction. This includes di�erent which include both the strategic decision-making processes opinions of Thighs of Steel and their network of supporters. Through our memorandum of understanding and regular check-ins with the Thighs network we intend to maintain healthy and consistent communication streams. As an organisation which uses consensus-based decision making and functions through a horizontal structure, MASS Action works towards dismantling the hierarchies in place across the third sector. While this structure allows all members of the team the opportunity to o�er opinions, work in cooperation and individually to solve operational problems, it also presents the challenge of slower decision-making processes. We are addressing this by consolidating clear working groups and revolving responsibilities so pressure does not fall on a few individuals. Other continued risks include intensifying government migration policies in Greece and the UK, which pose heightened risks to our partner projects, their service-users and sta�. MASS Action is alert to these developments and is constantly adapting to support our own team and partner projects through these uncertain circumstances.

Operational: Hosting our second Open Call has heightened our awareness of the need to consolidate our assessment process to ensure it is as consistent as possible. In light of this, and to incorporate the expertise of groups working on the ground we plan to recruit an external board of markers for the next Open Call. We intend to diversify the locations in which we deliver the Open Call. This presents an operational risk in terms of operations management and sustaining strong communication with partner projects. In regards to personnel, since MASS Action is run exclusively by volunteers, we face the ongoing risk of �uctuating capacity, availability and participation. A central risk for MASS Action is therefore the dual possibility of having limited capacity for important projects, and too much work falling on a small number of individuals. Furthermore the remote nature of our team may impact the cohesiveness of our group. However, our regular meetings and long-term distributed working structure puts us in a strong position to build and maintain good communication channels and working relationships.

Financial: Our partnership with Thighs of Steel presents new �nancial responsibilities and an increased funding stream. We plan to manage this risk through increasing capacity with more volunteers, and possibly reviewing the scoring process for grants to re�ect any changes to the scope of the Open Call through looking at our previous Calls and what we can expect for the next one. Our continued fundraising focus is towards our partner projects and the Open Funding Call. As a result, an element of our �nancial risk is ensuring that we can accommodate for our modest annual overheads. Good accounting and awareness of the amount of unrestricted funds as well as outgoing

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costs is needed to ensure there is enough in reserve to pay all bills and fees. Future grant proposals and unrestricted fundraisers should include a percentage contribution to our overhead costs.

Compliance: This is a medium risk area, the most important areas where MASS Action needs to ensure that it is compliant include GDPR, safeguarding, and areas of donor reporting. MASS Action has some systems in place to manage most of these, but we need to strengthen and evolve our policies to ensure there are clear roles and responsibilities, and ultimately accountability to individual, institutional and project stakeholders.

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEE RESPONSIBILITY

The charity’s trustees are responsible for ensuring the preparation of the trustees’ annual report and �nancial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

The Trustees are responsible for keeping accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy the �nancial position of the charity and its compliance to all legal requirements. They are also responsible for safeguarding the reputation of the charity and taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud or other irregularities. The Trustees take pride in maintaining the integrity of the charity and �nancial information included on the charity website and other social media.

TRUSTEE COMMENTS

on Following from the funding call we held in 2020 we wanted to try to acquire funds to put on regular funding calls. We found this challenging as most grant-giving bodies do not give grants for the purposes of re-granting to other projects. We applied again to Britford Bridge for a larger grant that would enable us to commit to at least two more funding calls over the coming years. Our application was successful therefore we will now focus our attention on organising the distribution of these funds through open funding calls.

At the start of 2022 we also embarked on a collaboration with Thighs of Steel. Thighs of Steel are a well established and organised fundraising group that have similar values to MASS action. Our ability to help facilitate their fundraising activities and manage the distribution of funds is a good example of a cohesive relationship built with our di�erent strengths that could create a more consistent funding stream to grassroots projects working with displaced people in Europe. For

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MASS Action, this means that we will have a larger pot of available funds to go towards our annual open funding calls.

Furthermore the that we to our has enabled a fundraising platform provide partner projects number of successful online fundraisers to be held over the past year. Khora, Chamomile and Mazi have all raised funds through MASS Action that will contribute to their running costs. It is great that we have been able to maintain an of MASS Action in this original objective providing fundraising platform making the process through which groups can fundraise less burdensome .

As our regular activities became more de�ned over the course of this year so have the possibilities of having more rigid roles. We anticipate that we will need to recruit further to support the obligations of our collaboration with Thighs of Steel, however we feel this will be easier with a better de�nition of the jobs related to this.

Financial review:

Charity income was £60758 for the �nancial year ending 31st March 2022 compared with charity income of £20772 for the �nancial year ending 31st March 2021. Total expenditure of £34195 for the �nancial year ending 31st March 2022 compared with expenditure of £45540 for the �nancial year ending 31st March 2021. Migrant and Asylum Seeker Solidarity and Action 2021-2022 �nancial year total fund balance was £36361.

Acknowledgements:

We would like to thank all those who have contributed to and been associated with MASS Action the course of during this year. To the members of the MASS team, our partner projects new and old, and to all those who have supported and funded our work, we extend our deepest gratitude to you all.

Firstly, we would like to thank all those who organised fundraising events, both for speci�c projects and for assisting our overall objectives. Furthermore, we greatly appreciate the time and e�ort put in by all those involved in our Open Call. We also greatly appreciate the time and energy spent by all those who applied to the Funding Pot.

In August 2021 Jessie joined our team as an operational volunteer. We would like to express our welcome to Jessie and the experience and enthusiasm she will bring to our group.

Josie Dibnah

Calum Frost

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LOOKING AHEAD

Looking to the future, we will continue to further the impactful work of MASS Action, by building on the successes of all the activities carried out this year and incorporating key learnings. To enable us to do so, we have summarised the main steps we will be taking to enable us to sustainably grow in �ve categories:

  1. People and structure:

  2. As our capacity has �uctuated throughout the year, we intend to build a more robust working group system, within each we will have several volunteers.

  3. Building our volunteer base will allow us to engage in our activities more e�ectively, we hope that our collaboration with Thighs of Steel may help to build our volunteer base.

  4. We will ensure overhead costs are covered for all volunteers.

2. Outreach and Engagement:

3. Fundraising:

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4. Projects:

5. Networking and advocacy:

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IIDEPENDENT E￿￿￿[[￿ER's REPORT TO THE TRITSTEES OF IllGRA￿T AND ASYLUI¥I SEEKER SOLIDAIUTY A￿[05 FOR THE PERIOD OF I APRIL 2021 TO 31 MARCH 2022 I reporr on The flnancial sthtements of Migrant and Asylum Seeker Solidarity and Action (the Chariiy) for the year ended 31 March ?02? as amended. Respective Responsibiltties of Trusiees and Examiner As the ¢hatity's TTUStees of Miwt and Asylum Seeker Solidarity a[￿ Action, you are responsible foi the pieparation of the fi¥wicial siateTnen15 in accordance with the iequiiements of ihe charity regulations. Having satisfied myself that the accounts of the clwity as amended are no( required to be audited and are eligible for independent examinatioty I re￿rt in reS￿t of my examination of your chariiy's financial statements as carried out under sttiion 145 of the Charities Act 2011 (the 2011 Act). In catrying out my examitiatioty I baNe followed the directions gil'en by the Charity Commission under Section 145(5Hb) of the 2011 Aa. Basis of the llldepeDdent Eiaminer's Report My investigation was conducted in accordance with the Charity Commissioners. Generdl Direciions. An examinaii¢)n comprises a rei'iew of the choriry's awouniing records and bank statements and a comparison of the finaJ)cial sthtements to those [￿Ords. li also includes considering any odd iiew or disclosures in the financial sthtements, as well as askit]g for explanations from you as trustees. Because the processes used do not offer all the evidence that would be needed in an audit. no opinion is gii'en as to whether the flnancial sthternents present e and fair Triew." and the re￿￿ is COnf￿ed 10 the items lisied below. Independent Ex#miners' Siaiement In connection with my investigation and #Il #mellthnents done. rio ttjattei has c4)rne to My tteniion thai give5 me reasonable cause to i￿lIeVe thai, in any material iespeci.. The accountin¥ records were noi kept in accordance with Section 30 of the Charities Act, The accounts were inconsistent with the accountin¥ records. The accounts did not comply with the accouniing requirements c0nceTni￿g the fortn and content of accounts set out in the Charities Re¥ulations 2008 other than any requireTnent that the accounts giN'e a kne and fair" view. which is not a matter considered a% part of an independent examination. J don't have any wo￿leS. and I haven't found an￿h]ng else duting the examination that should be brought up in this tetxTrn so that the accounts can be under5100d properly. Regards Oladele Olayiwola (Accountant} 15

MASS Action

Statement of Financial Activities (Receipts & Payments) April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022

Josie Dibnah

Calum Frost

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