Our ambition is to introduce new ways of tackling entrenched homelessness, loneliness, isolation and unemployment. We do this by enabling and empowering people to help themselves through meaningful activity that will benefit both themselves and others.
We provide front line services to those people facing the prospect of homelessness to try to prevent it happening, while also supported those who are experiencing social exclusion or long-term unemployment. We do this in a number of different ways:
Emmaus is a solidarity-based movement, acting against poverty and exclusion. The Emmaus movement began in France in 1949 when the first Emmaus communities were set up. In the middle of a housing crisis, the first companions built accommodation to re-house numerous families.
Today Emmaus communities are spread across the globe, from Argentina and Guatemala to Bangladesh.
There are currently 29 Emmaus communities across the UK, helping more than 800 “companions”, the name we sometimes give to the people we offer support to.
We work differently to most of the Emmaus communities here in the UK . The traditional model of an Emmaus community is to provide a home and work for “live-in” companions who have experienced homelessness. Instead, we work to prevent homelessness before it happens and to tackle social isolation, complimenting the work of Emmaus communities around the UK.