New Horizon Athlone – Refugee and Asylum Seeker Support Registered Charity Number (RCN): 20204649

New Horizon is a community group which has been working with international protection applicants in Athlone since 2000. Our main focus is on almost 350 residents in Direct Provision sites in Athlone and Horseleap, Moate.

New Horizon is a fully registered charity RCN: 20204649. Check us out on the Charity Regulator Website

We are a group of voluntary, unpaid workers without state funding. We promise total and absolute confidentiality in all our dealings with clients.

As activists, we welcome asylum seekers and refugees and wish to help and support them as they start to rebuild their lives.

This website exists to:

Provide useful information about living in Athlone and Ireland.
Provide information on how to maintain your physical and mental health
Provide information to help you navigate the asylum process.
Provide useful information to help you leave the asylum process.

If you just want to browse the information follow the links at the top of the screen.

News shows what’s going on
Projects we are running
Information database
Cookbook – the taste of home
FAQs

Additional services, such as groups and forums, are available to registered users.

If you would like to go further just register here.

Then log in with the ID and password you created.

Activities at New Horizon

Launch of Tales My Granny Told Me
The launch of ‘Tales my Granny Told Me’ in Athlone library on World Refugee Day 20th June was a remarkable and wonderful event. This is…
Street Circus!
Keep the date!
Refugee Week
World Refugee week in Athlone runs from 18 to 23rd June 2022. New Horizon Refugee and Asylum Seeker Support and Friends would like to invite…
Africa Day!
Athlone African Community group are pleased to invite you to celebrate Africa day next Saturday 28th May in Burgess Park between 11am and 8 pm.
Into the Woods
Twenty of our young Ukrainian guests have been enjoying the Forest Experience Project. There they can Run and Jump and Scream and Splash and have…
Sunday Circus Extravaganza!
Join us on Sunday 19th June for the great

FAQ’s

We are a front line refugee support group mainly working on the Lissywollen Direct Provision site in Athlone. Our focus is on providing information and help to the 300 (on average) residents living there.

We also work on the Temple Direct Provision site in Horseleap, Moate.

Everyone in the DP sites in Athlone and Temple is what is described as a ‘Convention’ refugee. People who have arrived in Ireland under a United Nations resettlement program are known as ‘Programme’ refugees.

Convention refugees are people who have made their own way to Ireland and have applied for recognition of refugee status when they arrive.

Various official and unofficial routes and methods are used to travel to Ireland. These change continually, depending on weather conditions and enforcement levels at crossings.

On arrival people are normally housed for a few weeks in Baleskin, near Dublin airport. They are then dispersed to various direct provision centres around the country.

People can get protection if they meet the conditions set out in The United Nations Convention on Protection of Refugees.

See Definition of a Refugee