It’s been a busy – but brilliant – start to the year for our transformative JUMP befriending project. From incredible, co-created group activities to impactful casework support, here’s a snapshot of what we’ve achieved in the first three months of 2025.
Meet-ups and pairs
JUMP’s supported fortnightly befriending meet-ups for almost 20 years, and we’re proud to currently be working with 33 pairs. So far in 2025 we’ve facilitated over 200 befriending hours – and with an expansion of JUMP underway, we’re excited to see this grow even further!
From walks in the park, museum visits, to simply meeting for a coffee and a chat, these meet-ups build meaningful, trusting, and long-lasting friendships. Each pair gets a budget and choose together how to spend this and their time.
JUMP is the best thing that happened to me
Feedback from one of our young people in March 2025.
Casework
Sadly JUMP’s young people often face barriers and challenges in their journey to integration in UK life. But our JUMP team is on hand to help, offering a tailored and bespoke casework service. So far this year, our incredible project staff have delivered 137 casework interventions, ranging from tackling homelessness and housing issues to enabling access to legal support and education.
We’ve majorly expanded JUMP’s casework support provision across the past 12 months.
Hardship Fund
Many of JUMP’s young people are seeking asylum in the UK, and subsequently banned from working and forced to rely on Home Office support. For those housed in catered accommodation, this is just £8.86 per week.
This is clearly nowhere near enough to live on. So JUMP’s Hardship Fund provides a lifeline, ensuring our young people can live in dignity and access key essentials. So far this year we’ve allocated over £3,700, covering 78 food vouchers, 35 travel top-ups, and 25 phone contracts.
The JUMP ‘shop’ in HIAS+JCORE’s office: high quality clothing collected through Mitzvah Day, available for all our participants.
The JUMP community
The JUMP community – which brings together our pairs for fun, co-created activities – has gone from strength to strength in 2025! We’ve run five amazing events so far and have exciting plans for the rest of the year.
In February, we kicked off our new employment workshop series, and were delighted to be joined by recruitment expert Will Betts, who shared some great tips on CV writing. Will also worked with our young people to help them identify their skills – all with the aim of ensuring they have the best possible chance of getting an interview.
We’ve matched this with a new partnership with Fika Training and Bloom Coffee, who are running a series of Barista trainings for our young people.
Other activities have included our new Film Club, run in partnership with Pixida and JW3, an amazing Iftar, and a baking session at Luminary Bakery.
We used a young person’s recipe at our recent baking session – the results were delicious!
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