She helps many of the refugees we support here get access to computers, which can make a huge difference to them.

We always want to help when people ask us for tablets, laptops and computers, and one of our volunteers, Sarah, noticed that Elizabeth had donated some to Care4Calais. Sarah got in touch, and now we have a great relationship with a rather remarkable woman.

Elizabeth runs a computer repair and assistance service, and is often asked by customers if she wants their old machines. She decided to start passing them on to Care4Calais because she “feels great sympathy for refugees, and I knew these were the people I wanted to help.”

Elizabeth’s sympathy dates back to her childhood. Now 84, she was born two years before the start of World War 2, and when she was a baby, her parents shared their home with a Jewish refugee from Germany. He was a photographer, and took a picture of her for her parents. “My parents thought what was happening in Germany was terrible, and so they wanted to help. The photo their guest took is one of the first anyone took of me, so it always seems like a reminder in a way.”

“It’s horrible to see what the refugees in Calais have to go through, and how they’re demonised. I don’t believe the majority of people feel hostile to them. I live near a beach on the south coast, and one day a refugee boat landed near us. I took my grandchildren down to see what was happening, and there were lots of local people on the beach. All of them were cheering the refugees.”

Elizabeth started working with computers when a family member bought her a Mac Classic in 1995. “He said he thought I might enjoy it. It came with lots of thick manuals, and I loved working through a manual, and I gradually taught myself how to use it. I really enjoyed it, and from there it’s been a natural progression to helping other people.

“I know IT equipment can mean that people can stay in touch with their families, and for people with families here it means their children can do homework from school, so I feel happy to know I’m helping.”

“I think the refugees could be a great asset to our country helping to work in the industry care and hospitality, where we need more people. I also think we’re so fortunate to live in a safe and prosperous country, and we need to share this with people fleeing from repression, torture, famine and poverty.”

Elizabeth, volunteer

To contribute to our work with refugees in the north east of England, go to peoplesfundraising.com/fundraising/care4calais-north-east

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Quite a few pulled them on straight away, and were asking what we thought of the colours. One guy with a football scarf was asking “What is Bradford City?” laughing and pretending he had to know before he could wear the scarf. Luckily we had some football fans who could put him straight, and he seemed happy!

Despite the chill there was a wonderful atmosphere, with music playing and stories being told, and I felt happy just seeing people smiling, joking and getting on as the afternoon went on.

And then at the end, a small thing happened that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I was helping to pack our things away when I caught my thumb against something sharp, and cut it. It really hurt, and when I looked down I saw that there was rather a lot of blood.

I was still trying to wipe some blood away and wondering what to do when I saw one of the guys, I think his name was Omar, rushing over to me. He reached into his bumbag and took out a clean dressing. He must have kept it there as injuries are so common here when people are trying to hide in lorries. Such things are not always easily available to refugees, but nevertheless he calmly and quietly wiped my thumb, and then neatly dressed it.

Once it had stopped bleeding so much he bandaged it carefully and gently. I felt so well looked after that my thumb immediately felt much better.

This is someone who will have had an incredibly hard time even getting to Calais, and will be now sleeping in a makeshift tent, knowing that the police may come at any moment to destroy the camp and move them elsewhere. But he was still not only ready to help me, but also to give me something that was important to him.

I have so much respect for the people we meet here, who are so resilient and kind. It is so  far from the ridiculous stereotype of refugees as people who want to take things from us.  Any country should be begging them to come as they will be an asset to any society.

A, volunteer

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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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“As volunteers we just try to show refugees that there’s hope in the world, and they don’t have to suffer alone,” she says. “We see a ripple effect; if you someone feel better, they’ll make others around them feel happier too. And you feel amazing to see the effect.”

Katey began volunteering in Calais and continued with the Access team when she got back to the UK. Then one day a volunteer called her to say there was a mother with a three-month-old baby who needed support in Wimbledon.

When Katey arrived at the woman’s hotel and noticed it was full of people with no spare clothes or support, she decided to set up a Care4Calais volunteer group in the area with some friends. Once that was up and running, someone took over and she went on to set up the group in Croydon, where she lives.

Katey now runs a network of volunteers who support more than 1,000 refugees in six hotels in the Croydon area.

The Croydon group provides help in the form of clothing, food parcels and phones and also provides social support and interaction, including language lessons, sports, kids crafts and drop-in sessions. One of Katey’s most successful initiatives has been to set up links with other local groups who can offer specialised help, such as food banks and children’s charities. She even made an arrangement with the local Waitrose for the supermarket to donate food that might have otherwise been thrown away.

“If we try to do everything on our own, our work might not be sustainable. But we all work together, we can make progress. And I don’t see that progress coming from anywhere else at the moment.

Volunteering with Care4Calais, she says, means doing something that has an impact straight away, and helping people who deserve our support

“The world is full of amazing people each with their own skills, talents and cultures. At the end of the day it’s a matter of chance which country you were born into. In the UK, everyone should have access to clean clothes, toiletries and access to help if they need it.

“But that emotional support is so important too. Kindness goes a long way. There’s a lot of pain in the world, but like small things will make a difference.”

Katey needs more volunteers to help in Croydon. If you can help, please get in touch through care4calais.org/get-involved/

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The boy, who I’ll call Tariq, suddenly disappeared, only to reappear a few moments later with a sticking plaster. It was such a moving thing to do – he had been through so much, but he could still notice and help with my little problem. I have only been in Calais for a week but I’ve already learned that the refugees here often have big hearts.

We talked some more, and he told me that a few days ago he had tried to cross to the UK in a boat, but but the engine had failed. They had been stranded on the sea among high waves, and terrified until they were rescued.

But still, he said, he would be trying again tomorrow (that’s now today). It was a chilling reminder of their situation; even that terrifying risk is better than what they have left behind.

I’ve met a lot of Afghan people in my time here so far. There are many in Dunkirk – in fact there are so many, and they like making friendship bracelets so much that we buy big reels of thread in green, black and red, the colours of there Afghan flag! Small things like that are so important when they’re this far from home. Like Tariq, they all just want to get and job and work, to have a normal life, and most feel sure the British Government would welcome them.

Their faith in us is so at odds with what some of our politicians say, it’s heartbreaking sometimes. I know Tariq has left now, and he must be either still at sea or in the UK. I really hope he gets the welcome he deserves in the end.

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Today we were distributing SIM cards to refugees in Dunkirk when I met Ramtin. He’d just arrived at the site with his wife after fleeing from Iran, and he said he was feeling like he was “in a very bad situation”. 

A few weeks ago he had been living a normal life as a financial manager in Iran. Then he had heard about a protest against the government, and wanted to go along, just to make his feelings known. But the police had grabbed him and put him into detention, and even though he’d been released, he knew they would come for him again. 

He and his wife had fled immediately. He was almost in tears as he said he was so worried because he felt staying in a tent here might not be safe for her, but she was a brave lady, and they wanted to be together. Later when I saw them together you could tell there was so much love between them as they tried to reassure one another in this new place. 

Their journey had been frightening, Ramtin said, crossing through the mountains to Turkey and then travelling to Italy via Greece by boat. Their only hope of finding help and safety was to get to the UK where he had family. 

It was vital for him to speak to his relatives so that he could find them and get advice, but he couldn’t get in touch with them because his SIM from home no longer worked. “So it’s so important for me to get this,” he said. Again tears came to his eyes. 

People should just not have to go through this when all they’re doing is trying to make themselves and their wife safe from harm. 

A, volunteer

Our SIM cards make a huge difference to refugees like Ramtin and his wife everyday. If you can help us to provide them, please do. To volunteer or donate go to care4calais.org/get-involved

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As I got closer, I realised that all their clothes were wet. Not just caught-in-the-rain wet, they looked as if they’d been completely soaked from head to foot. When I asked what had happened to them, they explained there had been “a problem with the boat” and made plunging signs with their hands. I understood; they had experienced something that has become all too common here in the last few weeks.

They had decided to risk their lives crossing the Channel, but their boat had sunk just off the French shore and they had been rescued. As they own only the clothes they stand up in, they had had to get as dry as they could and then spend the day waiting for the damp to leave them – not easy in the autumn in Northern France.

Some 970 refugees have been reported rescued in the seas off the French coast this month. It’s easy to see that as just a statistic, but that’s almost 1000 people who risked their lives trying to find safety, who must have been terrified as they waited for their rescuers, and then who had to live with the memories afterwards. It’s horrific.

For us it means there are lots more people who are soaking wet at night needing dry clothing as a minimum – we make sure to look out for them to offer all the help we can. Of course that’s what we did for the men I met.

This situation is chilling when you think that we’re approaching the first anniversary of the worst-ever loss of life by refugees trying to cross; as many readers will remember, in November last year, 29 people died horrifically when their dinghy sank. The horrific truth is that nothing significant has been done to prevent it happening again.

This should be the real story when we talk about 30,000 refugees crossing the Channel; 30,000 lives being needlessly risked, and that risk increasing as the weather starts to worsen. It is the most important reason of all that we need to provide safe passage for refugees now.

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A small group of us in Manchester have been running weekly creative and wellbeing sessions for refugees in the airport hotels here. We thought they’d be opportunities for the ladies and children to have a break, chat to different people and do some light crafts-type activities as a change from their normal routine.

In fact, as the sessions have developed, they have become as much of a learning experience and treat for the volunteers as the refugees, because the Afghan ladies have utterly amazed us with their sewing and creative skills. The intricacy of their sewing and embroidery really is incredible, and we have watched in wonder as different generations have collaborated on spectacular dresses.

Their kindness and generosity has touched us too. Last week, on learning that Karen, one of the volunteers, had a one-year-old granddaughter, they made the most amazing embroided panel and traditional Afghan dress for her. It was beautiful – you can see it in one of the pictures – and said so much about their talent and the friendship between us.

You can see the sense of safety and fun growing in these ladies who have been through so much fear and hardship in the last year. The feelings of friendship, belonging, safety and trust that have developed among us have really warmed my heart.

There are many other things we experience together, small and large. We volunteers were recently treated to Zafaran – a warm homemade saffron drink. And we were honoured recently to be able to accompany many women and children to the amazing garden at Bridgewater, Salford, run by the RRHS – Royal Horticultural Society on a trip kindly arranged by the amazing team at Manchester City Council and also the Walkden branch of RRotary International

I would recommend volunteering for sessions like ours to anyone – we always need more people, so please get in touch!

A, volunteer

To volunteer or donate go to care4calais.org/get-involved

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It started when we began running social afternoons at a hotel housing asylum seekers in the city. We began supporting a couple of people who were struggling with their mental health, and one Sunday afternoon we decided to take along some footballs and snacks to see if that helped.

It did. First one, then another person came out to see what was happening, and then more and more; eventually a competitive game of five-a-side football took shape with several other groups sat around in the sunshine watching, chatting.

Many of the guys had only recently arrived at the hotel, and one told us that this was the first time they had all come together in such a way. Now people from many different countries and cultures were mixing, and even though many were speaking different languages, it didn’t matter. All this had come from someone thinking to take a ball along! It really showed the power of football and sport in general. Refugees can be so isolated and used to being on their own, and little things like this can make all the difference.

Now, there is a competition called the Refugee World Cup, which takes place annually in Manchester as part of Refugee Week celebrations. This year’s event was run by Manchester Refugee Support Network (MRSN) and the Manchester FA and had more than 22 teams of refugees, asylum seekers and community groups from across the city taking part.

As we were watching the guys playing football in the sun we decided to get a Care4Calais team together and enter.

We only had a month to organize it all – not easy, as we didn’t know the refugees well at the time, they did not know us and we had no supplies.

Luckily we had met Mohammed, a refugee at the hotel, who was a massive help. He got the group together and did all the interpretation for us. Organising the team was a real community effort. A local football club called Lymm Rovers loaned us a set of strips. Football boots were donated by Happy Somedays community group. Lots of people helped, and when they day came, we were ready.

We had 13 players from so many countries – Sudan, Yemen, Eritrea, Syria, and Kurdistan – and a great photographer from Egypt to take pictures. Mohammed didn’t play, but translated and helped us organise everyone.

Despite no regular training, the team drew 4 of their 5 matches and by the end of the day had really come together and were looking threatening on the pitch. Our goalkeeper, Abdelrahman, made some spectacular saves which earnt him recognition as the teams (unofficial) player of the tournament.

Mohammed told me, “I would like to thank Care 4 Calais to do this activity and previous activities, it’s a good organisation and a lot of thanks to Lucy, Rebecca and Mara for making our day. It was a good day and we were delighted and wish to do more and more activities. Thank you.”

It’s been a great experience, and although the tournament is over, this is hopefully only the beginning. We are already planning for more matches over the summer, and will keep up our social afternoons at the hotel. You might be seeing us as a stadium near you one day!

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