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: 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: 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 …