Napier Friends formed from a group of local people who got together in response to Napier Barracks opening to accommodate people seeking asylum in Autumn 2020. At first, we were an informal group, and used the name to organise ourselves. In Spring 2021 we formalised our organisation, becoming a constituted group with a Management Committee, and welcomed 2 people with lived experience of living at Napier to our Management Committee. In February 2022 we gained our registration as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. In summer 2023 we restructured the governance of our charity to have a trustee board with a majority of people with lived experience, and made a commitment to retain this going forward.

We obtained our first funding, from the National Lottery Communities Fund, in September 2021. We employed our first worker in January 2022 – a part time Occupational Justice Coordinator (5 hours a week). Our second paid worker started in July 2022, coordinating our onsite volunteers and activities, and we were able to increase the hours of both these posts in January 2023 to 9 hours per week (with the Occupational Justice role changing focus slightly to become Community Engagement Coordinator). In March 2023 we commenced recruitment of a third worker to facilitate our cooking groups for 5 hours a week.

In spring 2021 we started operating conversation groups 2 days a week onsite at Napier Barracks, and started our buddy scheme, which went on to match almost 170 people with a befriender in the first 18 months. In November 2021 we were offered use of a room that meant we could store materials for our sessions at the camp and we started increasing our says onsite to 5 a week, and we started organising volunteering opportunities for residents in the local community the same month.

In summer 2023 we were given permission to start gardening within Napier, and some dedicated volunteers quickly transformed the space we were given. In January 2023 we started cooking sessions, and in March commenced both weekly English sessions at a local hotel and a support and social group for LGBTQ+ people seeking asylum.