Help disabled woman get citizenship and secure her future

Story

Hi! I’m Linsey, and I need your help to pay for the cost of British citizenship. As a disabled woman, I live a very difficult and costly life. But as a nonprofit worker supporting community youth work, I barely make enough money to survive, let alone enough money to save. But if you’re still on the fence about why I might need your help, here’s the long-story: In September 2014, I moved to the UK to marry my long-term partner - a British citizen. In order to be together, we worked, and we saved, and we gave everything we had to the UK government. Then we started all over again - spending much of the last decade trapped in a cycle of fees and looming visa dates. In 2020, I finally achieve permanent status in the UK (indefinite leave to remain). But then, you know what happens next in 2020 - the pandemic hit and the world as we knew it changed. As it changed, the cost of everything climbed, and I had the unique misfortune of discovering that the pain in my joints, the reason my knees would give way without warning, the reason my ankles would roll, and my shoulders would pop, the reason my hands would suddenly stop working, was because I had Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. By the end of the year, I was suddenly a full time walking aid user. It was almost as if overnight, I transformed from a girl who would walk for hours across the city day after day, just thinking and wandering as I loved the feeling in my leg muscles from hours of walking - into someone that could barely walk at all. Before long, I tore my ACL and meniscus, permanently changing the way I walked altogether, landing me in a wheelchair, and shifting my back and hips to an increasingly crooked position. It wasn’t just my legs that no longer worked as they once did. I could no longer sit upright for a full work day, I could no longer work full-time. Forced to cut my working hours, meant I was forced to take a cut in my pay as the UK slid into a Cost of Living Crisis, year after year. And though I have continued to work as much as I am able, and often beyond my body’s limitations, I happen to work in the nonprofit sector. Though the nonprofit sector offers me a level of flexibility and support I would never be able to achieve in the private sector - it comes at a huge financial and emotional cost. I love my job, and get to I do work that supports little girls in low-income areas across the country. I make a difference in other peoples lives, but because I have chosen a life path that values the lives of others before myself, I am unable to save, and am simply struggling just to survive. And that’s because being disabled comes with a HUGE price tag. As a disabled household, we have all the normal living costs other people do, and then on top of those costs, comes the added cost of disability - the cost of buying new knee braces every time the Velcro wears off from daily use, the cost of delivery groceries because you can’t leave your inaccessible house alone to go to the store, the cost of new mobility aids, the cost of delivery food because you can’t cook, the cost of Ubers/taxis because your back can’t handle the two-hour bus ride you have to take because London’s transport network is so inaccessible, the cost, the cost, the cost…. On average, disabled households need an additional £1,010 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households, even though we earn significantly less on average. My partner and I are both from hard-working working class families – I specifically come from a single-mother household, who received no manner of state support or child support. Despite rising challenges, I have worked as hard as possible to support vulnerable communities and individuals at risk across the UK and worldwide. but now, I needs your help to secure my situation in the country I’ve lived in for 10+ year. The funds will be used to: Cover the direct cost of citizenship: £1,630 The cost of a new passport: £88.50 Cover GoFundMe’s hidden fees (their tax, or whatever they’re calling it) If I surpass my goal, I’ll use any additional funds to book a consultation with a private surgeon, as I have recently been denied ACL reconstruction on the NHS. THANK YOU ✨