Moira team help ‘Calais Jungle’ refugees
Earlier this summer, a small team from St John’s, Moira made a 5 day trip to France to volunteer at a facility serving the infamous ‘Calais Jungle’ refugee camp.
Simon Henry, Diane Graham and students, Iain, Andrew, Stephen and Jack travelled under the umbrella of helprefugees.co.uk and worked mostly in a huge warehouse which serves the camp and its 7000 inhabitants. Alongside volunteers from all over the world they sorted shoes and clothes and were put to work boxing and bagging all sorts of food items – from salt to tea bags to chopped tomatoes.
The warehouse was a new experience – factory–like and busy but well organised with volunteers keeping the whole thing running, In the space of 2 days Jack was even promoted to managing the adult clothes sorting department!
To preserve the dignity of the refugees, very few of the volunteers actually go into the Calais Camp but Diane and Iain had one very brief visit. They saw the reality of everyday life there and chatted with some Sudanese, Ethiopian and Afghan refugees as well as visiting the multi– denomination church.
The team did, however, spend a day in a smaller campsite at Dunkirk with over 300 Kurdish and Iraqi refugees. They chopped wood, volunteered in the food shop and listened to people’s stories of desperation and persecution. The last day in the warehouse involved the boys sorting a mountain of clothing parcels bound for camps in Greece and Diane and Simon on vegetable cutting duty to help prepare meals.
“The people we were speaking to in the small camp were teachers, builders, engineers – skilled people,” said Simon. “They weren’t heading to the UK just for benefits or for other unwholesome reasons. A lot of the people had been bombed out of their homes and others had left because of religious persecution – people who had converted to Christianity and were being threatened by their own family. They were desperate – desperate enough to risk their lives to get over to England.”
He continued: “Anybody can go out and work in a warehouse, it’s not difficult and you won’t be directly faced with the hardships of the camp. Anyone pack a bag of groceries, anyone can chop an onion or put salt into a bag. They are always in need of more volunteers and I would encourage people to do it. It was a real eye–opener and a very humbling experience.”
View the photo gallery here.
Visit helprefugees.co.uk to find out the many ways you could make a difference.