Southwell's Tracy Annable is building online links to help welcome refugees

A woman set to house a Ukrainian mother and daughter fleeing war has created an online community to encourage others to do the same.

Tracy Annable has launched a Facebook group to urge others to open up their homes to refugees in crisis, and will use the platform as a space to bring Ukrainian families together as a community when they arrive.

Tracy is going through the homing application process and said the online community she has set up — Helping Ukrainian Refugees in Southwell and the Villages — would also act as a hub of support for those filling in forms and aims to speed up the visa application operation.

“I’m looking to take a mother and child in as I felt I had to do something and I didn’t know what else to do,” said Tracy, of Southwell.

“You know, I donate clothes and money but it doesn’t really feel like enough — and we have space.

“It made me feel like I could help in some way and thought if we could make someone’s life better for a while during a terrible time for them, then great.”

She already has more than 130 members of her online group.

She said: “I thought it might be helpful if other people doing it saw that I was doing it, and we could kind of support each other in the process.

“There’s lots of people in the group now asking questions and putting useful links and speeding the whole process up, it’s just about trying to come together,” she said.

“Also, I thought it may be helpful for others thinking about housing Ukrainians because in some of the villages, people were concerned about it being too remote and there not being much support for Ukrainian people.”

“But when people realise there are actually others in their village thinking about doing the same thing, people have stepped forward a bit more.”

Going forward, Tracy said the group could organise social events and activities for the refugees to help make them feel welcome.

“If one family has got a little girl and another has a little boy, we can sort of set them up and create a little community so it’s easier for them to integrate,” she said.

“You’d hope someone would do the same for us if the shoe was on the other foot. Everyone has to pull together,” she said.

Penny McQuilkin, of Norwell, has a family lined up to stay with her — a young couple and their four-year-old twin girls.

She said: “My husband and I have made a match with a family, having completed the visa application, and we’re so excited, and hope it will be great for them as well.

“Our family has friends who need to be homed so we are posting regularly on the group asking for help — the more we get the word out there, the more families we get in the district who know each other, which is better support for the families coming.”

To get involved in the online community, join at buff.ly/3ix8ahS

Penny said she could not imagine turning up to a little village like Norwell as a Ukrainian refugee and being the only one there.

“The family we are hosting is just a normal family who were living in Kyiv and they’ve found themselves in the middle of a war zone,” she said.

“It’s just awful. They will at least be safe here but they must be feeling so isolated, so to be able to bring a friend or family member with them to the same district would be really brilliant.”