“That’s what I’ve learned volunteering with Care4Calais – every single time there’s been a crisis, people have been amazingly kind, and that kindness has spread. So I don’t just have faith in the good side of human nature – I am absolutely astounded by its power!”

This amazing, inspirational and incredibly energetic woman is Seema, our lead volunteer in South West London. As well as being a ski instructor, school governor, mum of five kids and climber of mountains for charity, she somehow finds time to run a team of 80 active volunteers looking after refugees in a large stretch of the capital.

Seema’s also a wonderful and much-loved support to refugees personally who can always find time to help people in need. This week she’s been on a maternity ward helping a former asylum-seeking lady as she gave birth to a baby daughter.

“I’d helped her find accommodation when she got leave to remain,” she says. “When she was in hospital she phoned me to say she was afraid, and people were all talking over her. I went in and she cried when she saw me. Her partner was there and you said ‘when you arrived, it was the first time her heart her blood pressure has gone down.’ Wow. It’s good to know you’re helping, because so often people in this situation don’t have others they can turn to.”

Volunteering for Care4Calais began in 2017 for Seema began in 2017, when she and her husband began helping in Calais. “Once I was sitting with some Iranian guys at one of the sites, and it starting to rain. They said ‘You know, we are treated worse than animals here, because they take away our tents, our shelter. We sleep on the floor, with the snakes.’ I never forgot that.”

In 2020 we asked Seema if she could help an asylum seeker at a hotel in her area, and she agreed. Realising that there were other refugees in the hotel, but not allowed in to meet them, she began going down with fresh fruit at the same time each week, and waiting outside. Word got around, and soon she was able to ask people what else they needed, and begin sourcing it.

She still brings that same resourcefulness and determination to everything she does for refugees, and is a wonderful leader. Her highlight of working with Care4Calais to date? “Oh, that would be when I got my free Oyster card at 60. The first thing I used it for was to travel to protest outside the Home Office.”

Seema’s parents were from Lucknow in India, and went to Pakistan during the Partition. They came to the UK when she was two, using the money her collefe-professor dad father earned from writing a book about the Sultan of Swat. At 18 she had an arranged marriage, but it only lasted five years “Luckily my parents were supportive when it broke up. I’ve now been married 30 years to someone who is Christian, whilst I am Muslim.”

If it’s taught her one thing, she says, it’s that life chances are “a lottery depending on where you are born, and it’s circumstances that lead you in desperation to flee. It could be anyone of us, so we should be compassionate.”

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“Because you see joy on the faces of people when you make them feel safe and wanted, and you feel joy at being part of a team doing good things. That’s why our Care4Calais team celebrates when things go right, and if people are hostile to us and refugees, well, when they go low, we go high.

“If the far right are doing hateful things in our area, we say RIGHT! Let’s have some picnics! Let’s throw a party! Let’s do things that are filled with love!

“You can take activism and make it fun. That’s why you can see me in the picture taking the Stop Rwanda message to Hogwarts!”

Katie Spencer Matthews, our regional lead for West Yorkshire is an irrepressible force of nature. Laughing, chatting and joking all the way, she somehow manages to run a team supporting more than 1000 refugees, as well as teaching drama and sharing a home with partner and a daughter.

She got involved during the Pandemic, first as a virtual volunteer. “The first lady I helped was a survivor of female genital mutilation. She had fled her home because she had given birth to a little girl, and there was there was no way she was ever going to let anybody do that to her child.

“As I helped her and her daughter with clothing, and put them in touch with local services, I realised there must be many more people with stories like that, and it was important to keep going, helping them. And after that I never stopped!”

Katie feels lucky because all the West Yorkshire team gelled quickly, and get on well. Volunteering doesn’t feel like work, because they’re friends. “I mean, it’s no real hardship to walk into an asylum accommodation with a fantastic bunch of people and help lots of refugees, is it?”

She’s helped hundreds of people. One particular big win she remembers was a 16 year old Yemeni boy, who we’ll call A. Katie asked his school to keep him back a year so he would catch up properly, and when the head agreed on condition she found A a tutor, she persuaded a tutor friend called Emily to do it free. She ended up being employed by the school to help other refugees, and grew close to the boy and his parents.

“They have leave to remain now,” Katie says, “the school has a great teacher, and they are basically part of Emily’s family now. If that’s not a case for joy, what is?” She laughs.

You can tell Katie’s relationships with refugees is amazing – they smile when she walks into a room, and some of them take the mickey out of her Yorkshire accent, repeating what she has said. “It’s terrible!” She says, “The Yorkshire accent gets the mickey taken out of it all over the country, and now it even gets laughed at by refugees!”

There are a few downsides, she says. It’s horrible when asylum seekers are waiting for their interviews and you can’t speed it up for them. And when they get moved on quickly, so you don’t get to say goodbye.

She reckons the key to spreading understanding is telling stories. “That’s the most efficient way of gaining support. For a lot of people , a refugee is a statistic; an unknown concept, someone they never met and have no terms of reference for. Just sharing someone’s individual story can change all that.”

To donate to Care4Calais work in West Yorkshire go to: peoplesfundraising.com/fundraising/west-yorkshire-care4calais

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My name is Katie , and I’ve just taken a couple of days off work to help in the Care4Calais Manchester warehouse after seeing their Facebook post about needing support.

I’m an occupational therapist at a hospital here in Manchester, and I’ve worked with many soldiers who’ve been injured in Afghanistan. That makes this a subject close to my heart, and I feel a real emotional connection to the crisis.

I’ve also been a part of the mental health team supporting veterans. Many of the soldiers I help have teammates in Afghanistan as well as close friends they made on their tours of duty. Watching the news about what’s happening there is traumatic for them in so many ways.

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I’ve been to Calais many times in the last few years and when the pandemic started, I wanted to continue helping Care4Calais here in the UK. I’d no idea you could help here, but it was easy to sign up and get started. I’ve volunteering for about 18 months now

I’m based in the Slough area, and our team looks after some hotels there, as well as dispersal accommodation. I’m the lead volunteer for one of the hotels, which is home to 120 refugees, 20 of them women. Every single one, men and women, is so polite, and really nice to talk to.

I began my UK volunteering by meeting some of the refugees in the hotel car park to give them clothes and toiletries. Then I started getting messages from new arrivals and random callers from anywhere in the UK. For a long time I was the only volunteer helping at the hotel, everyone got to know my name – it was even written on a bit of paper taped to one of the walls!

There’s a lot of camaraderie in the hotel, and a definite unity between the religions. When I got Covid the refugees were really worried about me, and I got lots of text messages wishing me well and telling me they missed me. Some of these encounters have grown into real friendships, and I still take road trips out to see people who have been moved from the hotel to dispersal accommodation.

I do get a lot of donations, and sometimes among them we get some items that are, shall we say, a bit fashion-y and not so practical. We’ve had Hawaiian shirts, long leather jackets, flared jeans, cool new suits, shirts in crazy colours and the most flamboyant jackets you can imagine. We have fun with them at our “Saturday Styling Shop”.

Here refugees can try on fancy outfits, do a bit of fun modelling, walk down the catwalk and have their photo taken. If they like the outfit they can keep it. It’s a good bit of fun.

I post a lot of the photos on my Instagram page – it helps me get more donations as people really like to see where their old beloved clothes go, and they love to see them on another person.

Another great thing is the football games. So many of the refugees are young men, and they just love football. I source and give out as many football boots and shirts as I can, and I love to see their faces light up when they find the shirt and boots fit.

I was talking to this guy the other day about arranging football tournaments and getting some kits and a place to play. He owns a clothing brand, and he ended up giving us the T-shirts, but then he went away and came back with a big banner! So now we are having a five a side tournament. Sadly we have to pay for the pitch, so it’ll be back to more fundraising. But it’s worth it. Waiting for asylum is an incredibly anxious time for refugees, and anything that takes their minds off it for an hour or so is worth its weight in gold.

Of course it can be stressful at times. I can never fill all the requests I get, and I could easily get overwhelmed trying to juggle everything.

Luckily the volunteer team is growing, and we’re now able to set up a women’s group for the ladies in the hotel, who have been a little neglected. They’ve been very shy, but with the new volunteers we can build their confidence, and show them they are wanted here, and that the UK is a good place to be with good people in it.

They are all humans – beautiful humans – and they deserve to have the same as us, who have been so lucky in life. I just wish everyone could see them the way I do.

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