About Us | HostNation

Who Are We?

HostNation was founded in 2017 to offer friendship and social opportunities to asylum seekers and refugees. We wanted to give refugees – who are often very isolated – a way into our society through the kindness of local residents.

Our founder, Anneke Elwes, was experienced in befriending refugees and knew there were many altruistic people willing to step up. So HostNation was born: a digital platform for matching friendly locals to lonely refugees, which has fast become a wide family of flourishing social connections.

We gained charitable status in 2018 and a network of refugee referrers are now alerting us to refugees in need of friendship in London and across both the north-east and north-west of England.

We are a CIO registered with the Charity Commission. Charity no. 1180004

MEET THE MANAGEMENT TEAM

Anneke Elwes

Founder and Director

Rossana Horsley

Director London Programme

Anthony Berman

London Manager

Magda Wolfe

Evaluation Manager

Harley Kuyck-Cohen

Tyneside Hub Manager

Harriet Paterson

Communications Manager

Kim Gowland

Manchester Hub Manager

Cara Marie Dattani

Manchester Hub Manager

Claudia Möller

Art Director

MEET OUR TRUSTEES

Daniel Silverstone

Trustee (Chair)

Joanna Winterbottom

Trustee

Emiljan Gega

Trustee

Mohamed Massoud

Trustee

Lucy Gould

Trustee (Treasurer)

Olivia Petie

Trustee

Dina Nayeri

Trustee

Abu Haron

Refugee Advisor

Funders and Friends of HostNation

We are very grateful to the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Pro Bono Team for their legal support, to the Paul Hamlyn Ideas and Pioneers Fund for funding our start up, to The London Community Foundation for awarding us a Comic Relief Core Strength Local Communities Grant and to Trust for London for funding our core costs through a Connected Communities grant 2018-2020.

2019 started well with another successful grant bid from the National Lottery Community Fund and ended with a social prescribing grant from Team London and the Mayor of London's office.

Since 2020 the Paul Hamlyn Foundation helped fund our our regional expansion. Trust for London have continued their core funding for a further three years and The National Lottery/DCMS provided emergency Covid-19 funding through the Coronavirus Community Support Fund (CCSF). City Bridge Trust have granted us three years of funding for our London programme (2021-2023) whilst in 2022 Garfield Weston Foundation and the Headley Trust provided unrestricted core funding. In Sept 2022 the University of Manchester Business School chose HostNation for pro bono consultancy from their new cohort of MBA students on their not for profit module. In 2023 The Henry Smith Charity confirmed 3 years of core funding.

Thank you to all our funders for believing in us and the work we do.