A few months ago I
went out to the refugee "camp" in Dunkirk. Originally planning to do medical/first aid, as soon as we arrived we realised
that even the basic needs of the people living there weren't being met - forget
medical help, they needed dry clothes, shoes that fitted and food to eat... I've
never been very political, I'm definitely not an activist, but that trip was
life-changing and eye-opening (the full account is here) and as soon
as I could get the time off and another group of us together, a second trip was
planned.
I'll post some background details, some useful things I
learnt about collecting donations and fundraising and what we did out there in
case anyone reading this wants to help and get involved.
******
Background
There used to be a field in a suburb of Dunkirk. It became an unofficial camp for
refugees - nearly all Kurdish from Iraq/Iran/Syria - and turned into a horrific
quagmire of mud and sewage. MSF along with other charities, volunteers and the
mayor of Grand Synthe (the suburb of Dunkirk)
built a new camp about 15 minutes away. Not ideal as it is further from shops
and bordered by a dual carriageway and railway track, it does have lots of
wooden shelters (to replace the tents and tarpaulins being previously used) and
more importantly has no mud. There is some form of food available daily,
including a "free shop" where each hut can collect a small bag of
potatoes/onions/flour/salt/lentils/chickpeas etc (depending on availability)
and regular distributions of clothes etc when the warehouse have any. There
were even plans to build big communal cooking areas but I'm not sure what's
happening now with the latest news...
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| Was going to be a communal cooking/eating area - future uncertain now |
Donations
We focused on what was desperately needed including
tracksuit bottoms, hoodies, socks, trainers and sleeping bags. I posted on some
local facebook groups and had an amazing response. Local mums who read about
our trip did clothes drives at schools, a heavily pregnant friend collected
donations from half her county, a member of a local PTA donated loads of
secondhand school tracksuits etc. We even managed to take out 50 extra bin bags
of clothes/shoes thanks to some totally fabulous school kids doing a massive collection
and with the help of a local mum who persuaded her husband to drive their large
van down! People can be amazing.
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| Our bedroom floor! |
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| Amazing collection done by a school in East London - wow! |
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| We only just fitted in the car :) |
If you are doing a collection I would definitely say make
sure you are really picky though. Having some prior experience I was very
specific about what was needed. Some people were brilliant and just donated
what we had asked for. However others viewed it as an excuse to just donate any
old rubbish they had lying around!! But we tried not to waste anything and
whatever wasn't suitable for us to take to France I found other uses for - we
took 3 bin liners of clothes/shoes to the local charity shop, gave 2 bin liners
to the local women's refuge and have 4 bags waiting to join a container going
to Greece.
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| My favourite note - I found it pinned onto some donated leggings. So much politeness from donors in Oxfordshire! |
We also set up a fundraising page and raised an amazing
£1500. We spent some before we left (eg we bought 2 boxes of supplies for the
school and 3 big bags of supplies for the camp kitchen) but took the majority
of it with us to spend over there. A full breakdown of where the money went is
at the end of this post. Thank you so much to all our amazing donors!
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| A lot of torches! |
Our trip
To be honest I wasn't sure what to expect. The previous
camp had been awful for so many reasons but I kept hearing that the new camp
felt soulless, no one was happy, it was hard for volunteers to help even though
they were still needed etc etc. So I did have some trepidation, especially as I
was the only one of the original group returning so everyone expected me to be the
expert!
Yes the camp did feel different but that's not
necessarily bad. There is a lot more privacy for the refugees now which I think
is good. The children can actually run and play and ride bikes. There are
showers and loos with running (hot!) water. There is a place for adults to
learn English and French. There is a laundry so dirty clothes do not need to
just be discarded. And there 2 schools - one for younger children, a safe place
where they can play and actually be their age, and one for older children which
teaches English, maths etc and tries to plug in some tiny way the massive
gaping education hole left in all these displaced children's lives. And there
is NO mud!
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| Lots of open space to play in |
So what did we do out there? Here's a brief summary of
each day just to give an idea of the varied ways in which anyone can help:
Day 1:
We arrived at lunchtime and went straight to the
warehouse to drop off all the clothes/shoes we'd brought. We then volunteered
to stay and help there for the afternoon as they were (are always!) desperate
for more hands to help sort through all the donations. We spent the next few
hours unpacking and sorting, and it was really interesting for us to see the
whole pathway for donations - from initial warehouse drop-off to distributing
on the camps.
And after 5 hours hard work we managed to find a nearby
beach to make sand angels on and then had some last minute practice on making balloon animals for the kids the next day :)
Day 2:
Our first day in the camp. I was so glad the mud has gone
and it was so nice to see children able to run around and play outside rather
than being knee-deep in filth. We were on "general duty" in the
morning which can involve anything from picking up rubbish, to chopping
vegetables to directing traffic.
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| Flowers outside one of the huts - each small "house" was so well-cared for |
In the afternoon we did a mammoth shopping trip (thanks
to all the money donations) and bought enough food for 450 (one for every tent
and hut in the camp) food parcels, containing fresh fruit and snacks. It's hard to imagine just how many 450
pieces of fruit equates to but we filled 7 shopping trolleys full to the
brim... I was definitely not amused when the supermarket cashier wanted to scan
*every* single item!! But after several hours of a super-efficient production
line (sitting in the supermarket car park next to our car!) all parcels were
made and ready to be distributed the next day.
We also delivered 2 bags of new cooking utensils, 10kg of
spices, 4kg of salt, and a lot of tuna/chickpeas/tomatoes to the camp kitchen.
I found this day pretty poignant. The camp was so
different to the previous one, so many positive ways but it did feel slightly
disconnected in a way that is hard to explain. But the people living here are
so ingenious. We saw makeshift swings using plastic boxes, slides wedged up on
fences and people managing to cook meals for whole families on tiny stoves. Imagine trying to move your whole life into a tiny wooden hut. And then imagine you're sharing it with 5 other people from your family. Crazy.
My personal highlights included:
- sharing breakfast with a family who were making delicious homemade Kurdish bread over a campfire
- seeing the kids' excited faces when they hid under their coats to see their new glowsticks light up in
the dark
- Hatel becoming a mini-celeb and being asked to sing
Hindi songs
- how Reena's umbrella made the day for a mum living in the camp with 2 special needs kids
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| Our fresh bread after being on rubbish duty |
Day 3:
In the morning we helped in the Maktab (school). We'd
brought some supplies over with us so we could set up some new activities for
them and had fun bubble wrap painting and making pompom pictures. We gave our
outdoor chalk to the kids so they could decorate the new flowertubs and had
some lego models for the older children as they don't have much suitable for
their age range in the school (or camp!).
At lunch we had a quick shopping trip to buy 30 bottles
of shampoo/conditioner for the women's distribution container, as they had
completely run out, as many watermelons as we could find (a request from the
camp kitchen) and some fruit pouches so the kids could have a healthy treat
during school “break”.
Then we manned the "free shop" for the
afternoon. Here the residents can come and collect food each day so they can
have more independence and cook for themselves rather than just relying on
cooked food handouts. What they can get depends on availability (based on what
the camp has supplies of at that moment) but on the day we were there included:
rice, sugar, salt, chickpeas, tomatoes, flour, mackerel, potatoes, onions and
bread. We also gave out our food parcels to everyone - there is so little fresh
fruit available that it was lovely seeing how pleased people were with them,
and the biscuits and chocolate were very much appreciated!
Then it was time for final goodbyes to the families we'd
got to know over the last 48 hours and back to the UK. It's always mixed emotions when it's time to go. The time
out there never feels long enough and there's always so much more to be done.
You get so involved in camp life that it is always strange coming home, as well
as the guilt you feel about how easily we can travel around/cross borders/have
a safe place to live. But we all have families back here too and so the most
important thing is striking some kind of balance - doing what you can.
******
The final tally of what we managed to squeeze into our
car (which luckily was a bit like Mary Poppin's bag...):
- 12 sleeping bags
- over 150 tracksuit bottoms
- 50 pairs leggings
- 60 warm coats
- over 80 hoodies/jumpers
- 50 pairs of socks
- loads of gloves
- 80 pairs of trainers
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| Fit to bursting... |
All the money donated helped us buy:
-
enough food to make 450 individual food parcels,
each containing fresh fruit (apple, orange, lemon and banana), a chocolate bar
and packet of biscuits
-
11 giant watermelons (fresh fruit is a massive
luxury)
-
a big box of supplies for the kitchen (including
1000 plastic spoons, 250 bowls, tin openers/spatulas/cooking spoons, over 10kg
of spices and a lot of tuna, tomatoes and chickpeas!)
-
over 100 healthy snack fruit packs for children
and 30 bottles of shampoo/conditioner for the women in the camp
-
a selection of first aid supplies including 13
individual first aid packs and a massive box of strepsils/cough syrup/tissue
packs
-
a box of “miscellaneous” items including 56
torches (sooo popular!), nearly 1000 batteries (in packs of 10) and 20 “stick
on” lights for inside the shelters
-
loads of stuff for the kids play area/school,
including lego for the older kids, outdoor chalk and paints, loads of glow
sticks and modelling balloons and 100 tubes of bubbles
-
clothes desperately needed including tracksuit
bottoms, women’s leggings and socks
We also gave £100 to a volunteer in the camp who has been
there for the last 3 months and buys things the refugees really need but don’t
have access to (eg incontinence pads), £100 to buy emergency food for the
several hundred refugees who were living out in the open under a subway bridge
in Paris and £200 to the camp kitchen who cook for 1-2000 people every day. And
a bit further afield we gave £100 to a grassroots organisation in Idomeni and a
further £100 to a similar organisation on the ground in the Turkish refugee
areas.
******
I recently saw this quote by Audrey Hepburn which I
totally love - "As you grow older, you will discover that you have
two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others".
Last week I read a report saying the French government
have now taken the camp over and are
planning to close it down soon,destroying wooden huts every day. I don't know if that's definitely true but I
suspect it is. But even if this camp gets destroyed the residents will
still be out there somewhere. And there are hundreds of others in even worse
conditions. On the Serbia-Hungary border. On the Greek-Macedonia border. All
over Greece.
In Turkey.
And also further from us - in Jordan,
Lebanon and still in Syria.
If you'd like to help somehow there are a million ways
you can - raising money, collecting clothes, physically being there, signing
petitions, spreading awareness etc. In the same way that a snowflake can start
an avalanche, the smallest gesture can still be the most meaningful so don't
think you have to "go big", just do what you feel you can.
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| The new camp, already under threat |
