Crossroads Women's Centre

10/10/2024

Crossroads Women is taking part in the Big Give: Women & Girls Match Fund from Thursday 10 October to Thursday 17 October, and aims to raise £10,000 for our Women Together Making Community, Tackling Problems project.

We have a head start having already been awarded the first £5,000 through Big Give funders. To get the full amount we need to match this with donations totalling £5,000. That is, donations made to us during that week will be doubled until the £10,000 target is reached.

As many of you know, the Crossroads Women’s Centre is a grassroots women-led multi-racial community resource since 1975 addressing poverty and the widespread injustices women suffer. We offer a space for collective self-help, peer support and sharing survival information to women caring for others especially for children, disabled and elderly people.

More information is here. https://donate.biggive.org/campaign/a056900002TPUbsAAH

If you would like to support our work, any amount that you donate will be greatly appreciated.

Please note that only donations made via Big Give will be doubled. Donations can be made with a debit or credit card from midday Thursday 10th October to midday Thursday 17th October.

Thank you for your support.

A long-running holistic grassroots women-led community resource since 1975 offering collective self-help, peer support & survival information services to women living in poverty, especially those caring for children, disabled and elderly who are most adversely impacted by the cost of living crisis.....

14/07/2023

Public event: Thursday 20 July 2023, 6-8pm, Swiss Cottage Library, 88 Avenue Rd, London NW3 3HA.

A Global Women’s Strike event for South India Heritage Month. Thursday 20 July 2023, 6-8pm, Swiss Cottage Library, 88 Avenue Rd, London NW3 3HA.  ALL WELCOME. What we saw when we visited the women’s self-help groups transforming their communities with natural farming. We in the city must know m...

22/06/2023

Friday 23 June - 10.30am Kentish Town tube PLEASE JOIN US

Make Kentish Town tube step-free! Our needs are not “too expensive”!

Tomorrow, Friday 23 June, from 10.30am, we’re joining the protest at Kentish Town tube, called by Camden Disability Action.

WinVisible (women with visible & invisible disabilities) and Crossroads Women’s Centre signed their Open Letter to Mayor Sadiq Khan calling for a lift to be installed at Kentish Town tube while renovations are going on – so far Transport for London have refused as too expensive!

None of the stations near our Women’s Centre are wheelchair accessible, and the north-bound Kentish Town bus stop has been closed while flats are built.
This is totally unacceptable.

A lift is essential for us – disabled and older people, mums/carers with buggies and pushchairs, travellers with heavy luggage… We all need a lift – don’t let us down!

From Camden Disability Action‘s page:
Camden Disability Action is protesting against Transport for London’s refusal to install a lift at Kentish Town tube station during a year of improvement works.
The station will be closed for 12 months starting this coming Monday while its faltering escalators are replaced and the station as a whole is given a facelift.
But the Mayor and TFL have said it would be too expensive to also install a lift during the station’s down-time, meaning it will be as inaccessible at the end of the works as it was before.
This is an appalling decision and we refuse to let it pass! We can’t just be pushed aside.
We have set up a petition and written a letter to Sadiq Khan and this Friday we will be holding a peaceful protest. It would be great if any of you could attend.
Please join us from 10.30am to 1.30pm on Friday 23rd June 2023 outside Kentish Tube. We’ll be holding placards and shouting ‘Starmer Step Up! Make Kentish Town Tube Step Free!’

14/06/2023

Free Film Screening of NHS Borderlands, Panel Discussion and Q+A

We are hosting a free screening of NHS Borderlands, an investigative documentary exploring the human impact of NHS charges on migrants.

Come and learn about our national movement and about the local campaign at the Royal Free Hospital and find out how you can help to end the charging of vulnerable patients for NHS care. There will be a short introduction talk, followed by a screening of the 25 minute documentary, and then a Panel discussion and Q+A afterwards with some snacks and drinks available.
Refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants and are being harmed by the hostile environment policy and hundreds of vulnerable patients are being charged for NHS care at the Royal Free Hospital every year. Some of these patients are destitute, and others are reported to the Home Office which can jeopardise their asylum claim. The hostile environment policies lead to delays, deterrence, damage and tragic deaths for these patients. These policies worsen disparities in terms of health inequality and cause moral injury to healthcare workers.

Not only are these policies unethical and denounced and opposed by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and the Royal College of General Practitioners but they are also they are also a big step away from achieving the World Health Organisations target for universal healthcare. Furthermore, it has been proven in various studies that charging migrants for healthcare is not a cost effective way to save money, as it often costs more money to track down patients than is ever recouped, and leads to patients requiring emergency care in the long term which is more expensive and not recoverable. Good access to preventative medicine is much more cost effective and ethical. Healthcare workers refuse to act a border-guards.
The Royal Free hospital was set up, in 1828 to "provide free care to those of little means" and when the NHS was set up by Aneurin Bevan over 100 years later, the founding doctrine was that "illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community."

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/free-film-screening-of-nhs-borderlands-panel-discussion-and-qa-tickets-650317064847

www.patientsnotpassports.co.uk
https://www.medact.org/project/patients-not-passports/
https://www.migrantsorganise.org/our-campaigns/patients-not-passports/
http://crossroadswomen.net

23/02/2023

A Global Women’s Strike event for International Women’s Day 2023 Andhra Pradesh Natural Farming comes to Kentish Town!

Wednesday 8 March 2023, 5-7pm. Kentish Town Library, 262-266 Kentish Town Rd London NW5 2AA

SOLVEIG FRANCIS, based at Crossroads Women’s Centre, will report on her recent visit to the growing women-led farmers’ movement in Andhra Pradesh state, in India. ALL WELCOME...

She and her colleagues met women organised in 140,000 Self-Help Groups across 3,000 villages who are spearheading an agricultural, economic and social transformation through Community Managed Natural Farming (agroecology based on no/low tilling, crop diversity and ground cover all year round). They aim for all six million farmers and two million landless farmworkers in the State of Andhra Pradesh to be regenerating the soil by 2031, rejecting all chemical fertilisers and pesticides and using local seeds. This transformation benefits the land, the wildlife, the nutrition of the food, the health of the family, the women’s income, while lightening their workload. And it helps reverse climate change.

As news spreads, other states in India and other countries are working with Andhra Pradesh to adopt natural farming. As agroecology is increasingly being taken up in the UK and elsewhere, spread the word of this movement which gives hope to us all.

Global Women’s Strike: [email protected] 020 7482 2496
https://globalwomenstrike.net
https://twitter.com/WomenStrike
25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX

27/10/2022

The s*x workers’ occupation of the Church of the Holy Cross initiated by the English Collective of Prostitutes in November 1982 was a historic event in the history of King’s Cross and of the King’s Cross Women’s Centre, our former home (1979-1995), which provided a base for support work and for well-wishers and the media to be in touch with women in the church.

To mark the 40th anniversary and as part of the Bloomsbury Festival, the Church organized the event, Hookers in the House of the Lord – The Reunion (modelled on the Radio 4 series) to reflect on the significance of the occupation then and today with others who were there at the time – members of the ECP, local residents, the church and the police.

More information: an anniversary booklet, Hookers in the House of the Lord, by Selma James can be ordered online here :
https://crossroadsbooksonline.net/collections/s*x-work/products/hookers-in-the-house-of-the-lord-40th-anniversary-edition

And a brilliant recording of the event is here: https://prostitutescollective.net/event-the-reunion-hookers-in-the-house-of-the-lord-21-oct%ef%bf%bc/

26/10/2022

The City of Women London Map launched for International Women's Day features Selma James, co founder of the Women's Centre, who is Kentish Town (Northern Line) our closest tube station.

https://www.cityofwomenlondon.org

26/10/2022

Crossroads Women’s Centre : Making Trouble, Making History, 1975-2022

An online illustrated talk for Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre was held on Tuesday 26th July 2022. Founding member Solveig Francis, told the story of the Crossroads Women’s Centre, one of the oldest women’s centres in the country,
from its origins as a squat in Drummond Street in 1975 up to the present day. Shoda Rackal, a current worker at the Centre, also talked about some of its current activities.

If you missed this event, recording of the event to follow soon...watch this space!

26/10/2022

While there is increased recognition that caring work is indispensable, those doing this work, overwhelmingly women,are never asked what we think about how we spend our time, the resources we have/don’t have, and our relationship with the people we care for. The survey aims to find out what mothers and others caregivers, in different countries and of different genders and backgrounds, want.

On 8 March 2022, as part of the Wages for Housework 50th anniversary events series, the Global Women's Strike launched an International Survey - What Do Mothers and other Carergivers Want?

Fill in the survey here:

ไทย (Thai) https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L7SZJV5?lang=th

Español (Spanish) https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L7SZJV5?lang=es

Italiano (Italian) https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L7SZJV5?lang=it

English https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L7SZ