Our shopping trip for Ramadan

Yesterday I went with some other volunteers to a local supermarket to pile our trolleys up with 200 bottles of orange juice and 100 bags of flour. When one of the shoppers noticed the flour she laughed, and asked us in French if we were going to be making a lot of bread that afternoon 😂

In fact, we were buying these extra supplies for the food packs for Ramadan, which begins this evening. Many of the refugees in northern France are Muslim, and observing the fast here is difficult for them; they’re cold and hungry at the best of times.

During Ramadan though, they can’t eat between sunrise and sunset, so we help throughout the festival by putting orange juice, flour, eggs and dates into the food packs, which we give out in Calais and Dunkirk three times a week. We started giving out the packs this morning, and this afternoon in Dunkirk when we were giving out a lot of hot drinks and snacks, a lot of guys who were telling us they were getting prepared for the fasting, which starts tomorrow.

This is my first time volunteering in Calais, and I’m so impressed by the permanent team who keep everything organised and really make helping enjoyable. Somehow they manage to use everyone’s individual skills, which makes you feel useful (I speak French, so was dispatched to the supermarché where I could use it).

We all felt pleased and cheerful to be giving out the food and helping today. And I’m looking forward to using my skills again at the warehouse – I certainly feel like quite an expert at packing food into vans now!

– Helen, volunteer

To everyone celebrating – Ramadan Mubarak from Care4Calais!

And thank you to @SKTWelfare for the dates that we’re giving out during Ramadan.