Winter coat donation offers lifeline to a refugee in Calais

A quiet man approached me after a distribution in Calais. Unlike some of the people I’ve met here, he was wearing a big coat and looked really warm and snug in it. He had a big smile on his face and explained that until he’d received his coat he had been walking around in the rain and wind, freezing cold and unable to get dry and warm. Every time it rained he would be soaked through to his skin.

He looked me in the eyes and simply said “thank you”. I realised that we had given him this coat on one of our previous distributions. He was so unbelievably grateful, something as simple as a coat had really changed things for this wonderful man.