When we’re giving out food and clothing, we also provide big banks of charging points, and sometimes we give out charging packs too.

This afternoon Adil, a 17-year-old refugee, asked to borrow my phone while his was charging. “I will show you a picture of my home,” he said. I thought he just wanted to show me where he was from. In fact he found Facebook and showed me a photograph a ransacked and damaged house.

It was his actual home in Sudan.

Staring at the awful picture, he was tearful and overwhelmed. He asked if he could use the phone to call his family, as he had not been able to get through on his own. To his mounting anguish, though, he couldn’t.

“I know my home looks like this,” he said. “But I have not been able to speak to any friends, any family.”

He looked through more photographs, shaking his head. “My home, my home my home…” All this at 17 years old; his bravery was something I will never forget.

The Sudanese refugees’ mood in Calais is changing

We’re not yet seeing a large influx of people here who have fled the current outbreak of armed conflict, but Sudan has been dangerous for many people for many years, and the threats people have escaped, and the journeys they have been on, are always terrifying. The main difference now is the worry and concern; the charging board we provide have never been more important.

There are a lot of Sudanese people at the site where we were. The atmosphere is often very positive, but right now there’s a sense of worry under the surface. When you talk to the refugees there, you often get a sense of the anxiety over the situation at home.

We listen and support people, and help with the services we provide and essentials we give out. Last week we gave out 150 hygiene packs here, and today it was 125 waterproof coats. These are so important, because although it’s getting warmer, it rains a lot in Calais. It’s so hard for refugees to get dry again if they’re wet.

Adil showed me more pictures and videos from Sudan, some of them of horrific things. Bombed hospitals. Bombed out homes. Thousands of families escaping with a few belongings. It’s terrible to think that people fleeing this to the UK could be sent to Rwanda.

Adil had left Sudan before the new outbreak of violence. He just wanted an ordinary life, and was keen to learn English so that he could study and work when he got to the UK. Having seen his resilience, I really hope he makes it, and get the safety he deserves.

Can you help?

It’s amazing how people manage to stay cheerful in the face of it all; today towards the end of the distribution we put on music and some were even dancing. Playing football, or on the games tables, listening to music and just talking to people is an escape from the harsh monotony of life as a refugee. As a volunteer, it can be challenging some days, but then on others, seeing the sheer resilience of people can inspire you as well.

We help refugees like Adil everyday with phone charging, support and other essential items and services – but we can only do this together with you. Could you help by being a donor? Any amount, large or small, makes a big difference: to donate, go here

The post Helping refugees affected by the Sudanese war appeared first on Care4Calais.

So what I can do? I must go on.”

This is how Osama from Sudan described his life in Calais to me. I was sitting at Osama’s campfire after distribution one evening with some of his friends. They’d built the fire where they were living, in some scrub land in the hope the police wouldn’t come and destroy their tents.

He told me was the eldest of seven children. With the conflict in Sudan meaning they had no hope of escaping danger and poverty, the family had given him all the money they had to help him get to northern France. Even so, he had arrived here with only the clothes on his back, and is now getting by on the help that organisations like Care4Calais provide.

“You know, phone charging is the most important thing you do for us,” he said. Phones are vital to refugees. They’re the only way to stay in contact with home, and to check the weather, which is really important if they’re crossing by boat. They also need the GPS to make sure they’re going in the right direction, and then they may need to call the coast guard to be rescued.

Sometimes they have to walk a few hours to go to a phone charging point and then wait for their turn to charge the phone. At distributions, Care4Calais provides charging points – rows of sockets fixed to a board which is then plugged into a generator. Although the boards can charge dozens of phones at a time, there are always more people than sockets, and the generators only operate for a few hours a day.

Sometimes it can take a whole day just to get a phone charged. People often have to choose between a shower, a hot meal or charging. It also means they feel they lose a day as they can’t try to cross if they haven’t charged their phone. They wait so patiently and although they are disappointed when we leave there is never any trouble and the people collect their phones and wander off back to their bit of scrubland in the hope their tent is still there.

Many refugees lose their phones in evictions, and replacements are expensive to buy, but we try to provide as many as we can. We mainly rely on people in the UK donating their old phones to us, so if you have one please send it to us – we’ll make sure it finds a good home, and you’ll make a refugee very happy.

I hoped Osama’s phone got him to the UK all right. “I cannot be silly with this life,” he said as we ended our conversation. “I know either way to the UK is very dangerous, but what can I do? My family is praying for me.”

The post This is Why Phones Are So Important to Refugees appeared first on Care4Calais.