LAST week I attended the AGM of GARAS. 

GARAS stands for Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers and is based in Gloucester. 

I am proud to have been a patron of the organisation since its inception in 2009, and have kept in contact ever since. 

Like much of the voluntary sector it owes its existence to the church which acted where it saw a desperate need for intervention. 

Successive Bishops of Gloucester have been important therefore to its continuing role.

Under Adele Owen and her wonderful staff and team of volunteers they deal with the world’s problems at the sharp end. 

Recently that has involved the resettlement of refugees from Syria, that bedevilled country. 

However they have over the last eight years handled the needs of people from many parts of the world. 

In their annual report the organisation stresses that it has been a good and bad year – good in as much that its funding is secure and it is increasingly able to mount a very professional operation. 

Bad in as much that the plight of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers is becoming more difficult and perilous. 

I know that through my own involvement with South Sudan.

Over the years I have met individual clients of GARAS and have always been struck by how grateful they are for the help they receive. 

More often than not those individuals cannot easily tell their tales – they are too horrifying not only involving their own struggles but of those who remain behind. 

Not knowing what has happened to one’s loved ones leaves a terrible legacy. 

Finding out that they are still alive is one of the most moving experiences I have witnessed. 

Given that a number of those who use GARAS are unaccompanied children this is all the more difficult.

In many respects it is a tragedy that we need organisations such as GARAS but with the world being more and more unsettled sadly its future is assured. 

Given that the AGM was enlightened by a theatre company’s adaptation of the stories of asylum seekers who had previously been through the system those present were given plenty of food for thought on how we could all do more to help. 

That there were some really uplifting stories of what people in the most difficult of circumstances had made of their lives was the most positive outcome from the afternoon.

David Drew

MP for the Stroud Constituency