A huge & fantastic distribution in Calais

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Today I was so proud of our volunteers, who worked incredibly long and hard to help more than 300 refugees.

 

We did a huge distribution of lots of different items that are desperately needed – shoes, jeans, and tents, with some earphones also thrown in! These things can only work with a lot of planning and discipline, and today everyone had a very specific job and did it excellently.

 

For example, to manage the shoes, volunteers went out earlier to ask people’s shoe size and give out tickets so that we knew what would be needed. That meant that even when we saw the line was long we knew we had enough for everyone. A car became the shoe shop, and we brought not just a chair for each refugee to sit on and properly try on their chosen shoes or trainers, but also a bag of new socks and shoelaces.

 

It took three hours to give them all out, but everyone was happy at the end!

 

People who didn’t want shoes could choose a tent, jeans or earphones, and then say what size they would like of whatever item they chose. It went brilliantly – the amount of happy refugees who thanked us for giving them some dignity when making their decisions was wonderful. There were so many happy faces and lots of long lines, and it was great knowing that we could help everyone.

 

Besides all this, volunteers also brought the football goalposts and coloured gilets, so there were football matches, haircuts, bicycle repairs, clothing repairs, phone charging and wifi – and let’s not forget hot drinks! As Ramadan is over this was in great demand, and we gave out more than 400 hot teas, coffees and chocolates today.

 

We can only do this with your donations of trainers and jeans (and tea bags!) so thank you to each and every one of you who facilitates us to do so much. We love our volunteers and without them we would not be able to achieve what we do.

 

To volunteer or donate go to care4calais.org