Donate to refugees and make this difference

Today we gave out more than 150 pairs of new  shoes in Calais. There’s a particularly desperate need here right now, so people were really pleased and relived to pull them on.

Lots of refugees had shoes that were falling apart, and in the hot, dusty conditions this means their feet burn and small stones cut their feet. If all you have are battered old sliders or flip-flops, it can be even worse. At the distribution I noticed quite a few guys had managed to find sun cream, and were sharing it with others whose exposed feet were burning up.

At the moment refugees are having to walk further in Calais, because recent evictions mean many have moved to live further from distribution points. To make things worse, there are fewer places we can use for distributions, because the authorities have dug up some of our established sites.

Today we offered new trainers in a choice of black or blue colours. We held the colours up for each person to choose, and some decided straight away, while others took a while, joking about it as they pondered!

Later as we all chatted everyone was cheerfully checking out each others’ shoes. One guy told me he felt sorry for me because his trainers were better than my old ones, and offered to swap 😂

In a week when Rishi Sunak’s boots put footwear in the news in a trivial way, today brought home how important essential, basic items like this are for refugees here. We carry out regular shoe distributions thought the year. If you’d like to help, just £15 will buy a good pair of shoes: care4calais.org/donate-now/

Esme, volunteer