A magical van delivery
This week something amazing happened in Calais. We were getting ready for our weekly trip to Brussels where around 700 refugees are sleeping rough in the park. They always ask us for food because, although most nights there are hot food distributions sometimes these don’t happen or, if a refugee misses one for any reason they are in trouble. We take packs of dried fruit and nuts (healthy, light to carry, last a few days and packed with energy) plus tinned fish, biscuits or chocolate and fruit when possible. But this week our food supplies have run …
The power of language
Today was a good day, and I learned something too. We are It was at a food distribution on a new site in Dunkirk. I was working on the milk and sugar part of the hot drinks station with another volunteer, and at first things felt quite bleak, and many of the people there had recently been evicted from their last site. We decided that to try to make a little difference that day, we’d try to learn words for “milk”, “sugar”, “how many?”, “one”, “two”, “three”, in the refugees’ own languages, use those words rather than English all …
Art and refugees in Calais
A volunteer’s job in Calais is to make tonight as good as it can be for the people abandoned there, and add some joy and comfort to a harsh day. But sometimes something suddenly happens – maybe just a short, heartbreaking moment – to make you stop and remember the reality of their lives. That happened to me one day. I was helping at a distribution at the Old Lidl site in Calais, where we’d been giving out tents and blankets. Old Lidl is striking because you can see the lorries in the parking area from where the tents …
Love, knitting and togetherness in Manchester
It’s amazing how our volunteers find a way to use their skills to make a huge difference to refugees – sometimes it can be a simple thing, and yet it leads to such heartwarming experiences for so many people. Brenda and Liz’s knitting group in Manchester is like that. Just before Christmas, one of Brenda’s relatives donated a huge amount of knitting needles and wool to the Manchester warehouse. Juliet, who runs the warehouse had the idea of setting up a knitting club at one of the airport hotels where many of the Afghan refugees are staying. So they …
Sampson’s story
There has been so much fighting between Eritrea and other countries in the last few years, and now the government uses its young people to guard the borders. They tell you it’s only for a year or two, but some people never get away. And many of us get killed. Like everyone, I had to join the army when i was 18. When I had served a while I realised there was no chance of me ever getting out again. I wanted to escape, but it’s really dangerous getting over the border with Ethiopia or Sudan- you can be …
Elizabeth and the meaning of volunteering
Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor’. It’s a quote I try to live by. Care4Calais offers me a very proactive way of not standing by and actively taking the side of the oppressed. Care4Calais has given me the opportunity, as a volunteer, to oppose injustice in a very practical way. I love this charity and it’s genuine, deeply committed leadership. I have enjoyed meeting some wonderful people from all parts of the world. I have been impressed with the resilience and fortitude of the …
Sharing is Caring
The other day we found some leftover advent calendars among the food supplies. They were still in their eat-by dates, so we took them out on a food distribution to ask if any of the refugees wanted them. It turned out they really did! In fact They went crazy for them. OK, you might think, if you’re sleeping rough and finding it hard to find food to eat, of course you’re going to go crazy for a little luxury like chocolate. But that wasn’t the whole story. “Pick a number, one to 24!” said one guy to me, coming …
Wonderful news about our friend Sani
We just had the most wonderful news about our friend Sani. Last October Sani got in a small boat to cross to the UK. As soon as the boat was out at sea, she saw a big ship coming towards them, and thought they would all be killed. “One man on board went crazy and started unscrewing the cap to let the air out of the dinghy,” she remembers. “I shouted ‘You are crazy! Put that back!’” Partly thanks to her good sense, they all made it here, and she applied for asylum. Sani had left Iran, where she …
Ibrahim, a young boy left homeless by the system
The minute he turned 18, poor Ibrahim was thrown out of his home and dumped outside the Home Office, with no idea of where to go. Luckily he had a Care4Calais number with him. Ibrahim came to the UK in a lorry from Calais in 2020, aged 17. As a young boy he had fled alone from Darfur, where his people had been persecuted, and made his way across Europe. He says he has no known relatives still alive. The Home Office refused to believe Ibrahim was 17 and suggested he was 25. Ibrahim, confused, insisted this was …
Aziz’s story
Care4Calais helped me when I got to the UK, and I am so grateful, I can’t say the words to tell you how much. The most important thing they did was find me a solicitor, a very good one. I am Aziz. I am 27, and from Darfur in Sudan. Sudan is a hard place, even the city, But Darfur is brutal. The war has been going too many years. It is not unusual to walk into the bush and find dead bodies or people who are dying. In the villages you see people shot for no reason every …