As nights get colder, donate winter clothes to refugees

Even after five years of working with them the refugees can still really surprise me sometimes. We were giving out 120 winter coats in Dunkirk today when one of the first people in the queue, a man in a stylish orange jacket, came up to us asking for something warmer as the nights were getting cold. We managed to find him a really thick winter coat which fit him like a glove. But after he tried it on he handed me his own orange jacket back.

I tried telling him to keep it as this wasn’t a swap, that jacket was his and the winter coat was just something extra to keep him comfortable at night. But he kept insisting. “I don’t need it anymore, give it to someone who needs it,” he told me and left. He has almost nothing and yet he thinks of others.

I’m not sure who this man was. I didn’t recognise many of the people there today. A lot of people arrived in recent days and had only a backpack with a few belongings. Nowhere to sleep except for in the tents of others who are kind enough to share.

There have been frequent evictions in Dunkirk and Calais since July. This inevitably leaves people with nothing, having to start again from scratch. If we don’t give them warm clothing they will have to face the cold nights with nothing but a thin blanket at best.

If you have any warm winter clothes you would like to donate, please have a look at our drop-off points at care4calais.org/thedropoffmap