WE CAN BRING FOOD, HOMES AND FUTURES TO THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST

Refugees and people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity are London’s most disadvantaged groups. To support them, we launch our Winter Appeal with the backing of Rita Ora — and in collaboration with Comic Relief, which has pledged £500,000 to get us under way

- DAVID COHEN

If we were to begin this trilogy of harrowing journeys at the end, the first would tell of Aram, a young man who has secured a place at Cambridge University — having fled threats to his life in Iran and faced homelessness in London. The second would be about Leila, who teaches an ESOL course in London — but who experienced female genital mutilation in Yemen, attempts to arrange a marriage for her at just 14, limited English, and homelessness. And the third would recount the story of Feliks, who became a rabbi of the Birmingham Liberal Synagogue — having left Eastern Europe as an unaccompanied teenager with no English, and somehow found the strength to carry on after learning that all but one of his seven siblings had been killed, and that his mother, desperate to escape capture, had jumped to her death from the family’s fifth-floor apartment.

The reason to start with their achievements is to take seriously research that shows people who experience homelessness are often stigmatised, as well as polls that claim the British public resonate more with refugees who flee genuine danger, integrate into our society and contribute to the economy. Given that migrant workers are said to contribute an average of £78,000 more to the economy than they take out in public services over their lifetime, according to a study by Oxford Economics, and that the vast majority of homeless people who get housed stay housed, one might conclude that most refugees and people experiencing homelessness would be considered with compassion — if only the facts were better understood and their stories were heard.

Some of these people are now public figures. Singer Rita Ora, for example, who features on our cover, and who fled Kosovo as a young child with her family to seek safety in the UK, tells The London Standard how the journey her parents made has formed her.