A magical van delivery
This week something amazing happened in Calais. We were getting ready for our weekly trip to Brussels where around 700 refugees are sleeping rough in the park. They always ask us for food because, although most nights there are hot food distributions sometimes these don’t happen or, if a refugee misses one for any reason they are in trouble. We take packs of dried fruit and nuts (healthy, light to carry, last a few days and packed with energy) plus tinned fish, biscuits or chocolate and fruit when possible. But this week our food supplies have run …
Volunteer stories: Katie
I’m passionate about helping people. I always have been. I believe that every person has a right to safety, and I find helping people is rewarding in itself. Once I started to help with refugees in Calais, I got caught up in it and now I find that it’s impossible to give up. 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 …
Volunteer stories: Calais Light
“I’ve been going to Calais for about five and a half years now, first on my own, but I felt I had to do more. I run my own business with some large and demanding clients, so I didn’t want a huge commitment. So I thought, let’s try to set up something that suits people with my kind of lifestyle. So That’s why it’s Calais Light, a light touch organisation with a big impact. Before Covid we had been to Calais 15 times, during the pandemic we’ve still been raising cash and have given Care4Calais around £8,500 in 2020 alone. …
Volunteer stories: Connie
Right now, I can’t imagine not being here, and I can’t imagine anywhere that I’m more needed. I never thought I’d be helping people from distant nations on England’s doorstep. At university I always picked the modules on emergency aid and International development. Care4Calais helps people from all around the world who have found themselves in a corner of France, close to England’s shore, so it wasn’t hard to decide that it was the charity for me. I’ve been here for nearly a year now, and I really have no desire to leave. In Calais I have found my place. …
Volunteer Stories: Claire
I love it when the refugees start dancing at the end of a distribution, they always invite the volunteers to join them. It’s almost like they are saying to the police, “you will not beat us, see our spirit and our courage, we will survive.” I haven’t been brave enough to join them yet, but I really hope I will soon. I’m Claire from the Netherlands and I’ve been volunteering with Care4Calais for a while now. What really sets C4C apart from the other NGOs is the services. The organisation doesn’t just drop off items of clothing, food, toiletries, but …
Volunteer Stories: Our female powered admin team
A little known secret about Care4Calais is the incredible work done by this group of fantastic women. They are our behind-the-scenes superheroes – better known as the Admin Team. Right now, Care4Calais gets between 400 and 1000 emails a week – every week. From new volunteers to organisations like the Red Cross asking if we can help, there’s a huge range of requests to deal with every single day. Meeting all the demands takes tons of energy, organisation and quick thinking, plus a super-detailed knowledge of everything Care4Calais does in the UK and France – which is a lot. There …
Volunteer Stories:”Don’t Zig-Zag”
“No Zig Zag. No zigzag” is a cry often heard on the distribution lines in Calais. Zig zag is the refugee’s term for trying to push in and come round the distribution line twice. Usually when I catch them, they slink good naturedly out of the line, but occasionally someone can be stubborn and insist they have not been before. It used to make me cross, that someone would try to take more than their fair share, but the team here showed me how to see things from the refugee’s perspective. -If you have nothing, you’ve slept in the open …
Volunteer Stories: Val
What a day, so hot but we had a job to do. Sam my daughter of whom I am so proud had organised sourcing trainers, underpants and joggers and lots of jeans which admittedly were second hand but carefully sorted to find the right size. Her team at Care4Calais were a group to be proud of. Sam and I went yesterday afternoon to check everything was set for this weeks giving out of donations to over 80 young men in our local hotel. Last week the same group gave out underclothes, sanitory products and clothes to ladies and children. This …
Meet the volunteers: Charlotte’s story
“I met Ibrahim at a distribution we did in one of the hotels in London. When he saw me his face just lit up, and his whole body breathed out with relief. I was confused because I was sure I’d never met him before, “You’re here too” he said, pointing at my Care4Calais lanyard”. It turned out he knew C4C from Calais where we had helped him. He said, “It will be OK now, you’re here and I will get help, thank you”. Care4Calais has some amazing volunteers, and it would be impossible to pick the best, but Charlotte …
Val and Malc: Behind the frontline
It worked so well for us because they were just boys and you had to love them, love them like your own, because they were somebody’s boys and worth loving. So we did and I became Mama Val to so many lovely young men. When the refugee crisis began in earnest in 2015, my husband Malc and I felt we had to do something. We had been so lucky in life. We were privileged and had a lovely house in Varen in south west France, having moved there from the UK. It was only right that we share some of …