Reflections on volunteering with Help Refugees

I’ve recently returned from a week volunteering with Help Refugees in Calais. The following is an account of my time there. I give you fair warning this is pretty lengthy – there’s a lot to say and reflect on. I’ve included some photos too. Links and thoughts on how to help are at the bottom, if you want to skip down there.

For anyone not familiar with Help Refugees, they are a grass roots charity created in the final months of the Calais Jungle, and which has been providing basic human rights, such as food, clothes, and shelter, alongside a few French charities from that point onwards. They work out of a warehouse on the outskirts of Calais. There used to be a similar warehouse in Dunkirk also, which primarily served women and children – it suffered a massive fire recently, so now Calais is the sole source of help for the thousands (and there are thousands) of people who have had to leave their homes and are seeking a new one.

Those are some really staggering numbers.

Like most people, I’ve been aware of the growing numbers of refugees attempting to find peace, safety, or a better life over the past five years and whilst I had by no means forgotten the issue, the demise of the Calais Jungle had effectively wiped it from the notice of the Media. I didn’t think I could be of much material help, and had naively assumed that major charities must be working behind the scenes providing aid.

My assumptions were turned on their head a few months ago when I started listening to the Guilty Feminist podcast. The podcast has become a global phenomenon and deserves a post of its own, but for now, I’ll simply say that the episode where a group of long term Calais volunteers are interviewed became the inspiration and catalyst for my own journey. It took a longer than I’d planned to get myself organised, but eventually I was ready to leave.

I was nervous as I set out on the Eurostar, not really knowing what to expect. I’d told anyone who’d asked that I’d likely spend the week sorting clothes or working in the kitchen and never see an actual refugee, as they don’t come to the warehouse. My experience was much more varied than that. I kicked things off by working in Tent world after a morning briefing to the 30 or so volunteers who were there. The end of October sees a dip in short term volunteers generally and it was remarked upon throughout the week how unusual it was to have so many. This might be the guilty feminist effect, or the fact it was half term – there were a number of teachers making use of the break. Newbies were taken on a tour of the two warehouses and introduced to the various mini empires the rooms were divided into. Stopping at ‘Shoe mountain’ we were told that the numerous pairs of wellies were no use despite the obvious benefit of being waterproof. ‘You can’t run in wellies’ said our guide, which was the most sobering thing to hear at 9.30 on a Monday and effectively set the tone for the rest of the week.

For someone who doesn’t much like camping and is fairly short, tent world was a challenge. 1200 tents had already been sorted and packed away tightly, which seems like a lot, but Help Refugees gets through 10,000 over the winter months. This is because although the French have a law that no one can be without shelter over the winter months, the CRS (basically the French Riot police) will still remove people’s tents and belongings if they aren’t about during an eviction.

Imagine if you will a 5ft 2” woman sorting through a pile of pop up tents, opening one with a start (they really do POP), happily finding that all the zips work, the canvas is hole and tear free, and then spending 20 minutes wrestling it back into the compressed shape she found it. It’s not easy. Nor was the four man tent which took three of us almost an hour to fully set up, but the struggle was well worth it when we found the tent to be whole. Not every tent could be approved and added to the keep pile – some had broken zips (which were promptly despatched to the corner known as ‘Sew Ho’ – a broken zip is nothing to the magicians working there), whilst others could only have their poles and pegs salvaged. It’s slightly heart-breaking to consign something to the scrap pile, but it’s vital that the shelter provided will actually do it’s job. It’s hard enough living out in the open without your tent leaking.

1200 tents!

Quality sleep is hard to come by

 I ditched tents in favour of the kitchen the following morning and spent a large part of it peeling garlic. That may sound like a half hour job, but when the Refugee Community Kitchen serves around 2000 meals every day in Calais and Dunkirk, it’s definitely needed. There was a sombre mood to the warehouse, and kitchen in particular, because the 1500 people camped in what was essentially a mini jungle in Dunkirk were being evicted by the police (including the CRS). As far as I could gather from various conversations over the week, these evictions can range from peaceful to traumatic and sometimes refugees spend the whole day simply being driven around the suburbs before being dropped practically where they started. Reports coming in on the day suggested that this eviction was peaceful (as far as that goes), albeit tense, but it still meant a huge number of people were left without proper shelter as temperatures dropped. Technically the authorities are supposed to take them to welcome centres, but often there’s not enough room for everyone, they can’t stay for that long, and many people simply run away when the eviction starts. 

Photo of the Dunkirk eviction, taken by Help Refugees

Coincidently (and I use that word with a great irony) the eviction happened the day before the second anniversary of the Calais Jungle being destroyed. The cyclical nature of these evictions is incredibly wearing and frustrating for volunteers and refugees  alike, and the events I was hearing about really hammered home how little has changed, even though so much effort has been expended to try and move the situation forward. The food set up on that day further illustrates the ways in which Help Refugees are hampered. On a ‘normal’ day food is distributed canteen style, however given the dispersed nature of people, it was decided to pack up individual meals, and a military style productions line was set up. Have you ever helped process 700 boxes of food in an hour? It’s intense, let me tell you! The frustrating thing though is that of those 700 only 100 could be given out, the remaining people in hiding or moved away from the area by the authorities. The remaining surplus had to be composted.

I don’t tell this story to reflect negatively on Help Refugees – indeed it serves to illustrate the biggest challenge the charity faces on a daily basis as it tries to provide basic human rights. However hard everyone works to produce the food, warmth, and shelter, at times it can be impossible to distribute it to those they know are in need, meaning they go without. It’s a one step forward, two step back at times, and bouncing back from that is tough.

Wednesday morning found me back in the kitchen peeling onions. There’s little to say about that which I’ve not already covered with the garlic, although that doesn’t reflect an average day in the kitchen. There’s a wide variety of tasks to complete, I just didn’t do them! I switched things up in the afternoon by attending a very well planned and thorough field training. This is done twice a week, and anyone – no matter the length of their volunteer stint – can attend. Whilst the guidance sent when I applied suggested going out into the field would only happen if a volunteer had been at the warehouse longer than a week, the general rule of thumb seems to be that you should get as involved in as many aspects of volunteer life as you feel comfortable with. The only caveat to that particular week was that only long-term volunteers did distribution in Dunkirk in order to provide the refugees with some continuity. The training itself was excellent. It should be remembered that Help Refugees is a new charity and the only experience they have is what they’ve gained in the past few years. These are not seasoned professionals from Oxfam or the UN, and their commitment to ensuring their volunteers get as much training and welfare support (psychotherapists offer their services once a week) as they need is hugely commendable.

One of my aims for the week was to get a taste of as many jobs in the warehouse as possible, in order to report back and raise awareness of the whole experience, so my last two full days were spent in the woodyard preparing firewood for when the night temperatures dropped to 5 degrees (originally scheduled for early November, but inevitably brought forward to 28^th October). Chopping logs like a lumberjack was not part of this prep – very little wood the charity can get hold of is of this quality. Rather they have to make do with pallets, kindly given by various French companies, but which provide rather less heat and longevity that your average log. (Sidenote: I could go on a rant about bonfire night bonfires about to take place in the UK, and how that wood could be put to so much better use, but it wouldn’t do any material good. You get the point though.) The pallets are pulled apart and then the nails left are either bashed in or pulled out completely so they aren’t able to be turned into weapons. The wood’s then cut up and divided for distribution. A truck load of pallets provide about a month’s worth of wood, but I’m guessing that’s just for average winter temperatures.

I cannot tell you how therapeutic it is to bash a hammer at a piece of metal for a couple of days, whilst it rains!

I hadn’t intended to go in on my last morning, but by the time Saturday came around, I felt I owed it to give as much of my time to the warehouse as possible. It was properly cold by that point, so I went to help sort through the women’s clothes donations. The instructions for what was and wasn’t appropriate were clear, but one struck me as odd when I first heard it. The women liked stylish clothes – skinny jeans for example – and they wouldn’t wear polo necks. I thought this odd at first – I was already wearing 2 jumpers, and I’d been wishing I’d brought some fingerless gloves by that point – so the concept that people might be fussy about what they were wearing felt distinctly odd. Warm clothes are warm clothes after all. Thinking about it as I sorted through the piles of donations, however, I realised that it made complete sense. These people are no different from anyone else – the fact they have been forced to leave their home for whatever reason does not mean they should be deprived of the dignity of choosing what they get to wear, rather than having things pushed onto them. It might not seem like the most important thing when compared with other basic human rights, but when it’s all you have, it means a lot.

I was driven to the station by another volunteer who pointed out a patch of trees near the motorway known as ‘little wood’ which had been used by refugees as a camping spot. It’s now completely fenced off and people are living under the motorway bridges themselves. We passed a group just sitting on the hard shoulder watching the traffic speed by.

I wanted to use this post to give a flavour of life as a volunteer in the hope it might inspire some other people to go out. True enough it can be depressing and frustrating on many levels, but this is only part of the picture. I’ve not talked about the incredible volunteers who give their time and come from all over the place. I met a number of Brits and French, as you might expect, but there were also people from Spain, Italy, Germany and America. The sense of solidarity is strong and links are forged quickly. It is truly an experience worth having, and I can only hope that the situation moves forward in a positive way. The demands laid out in the photo below are hardly asking for the moon, after all.

How can I help:

Donations of money and goods can be made here (see the ‘get involved’ tab): https://helprefugees.org/

Volunteer here: https://helprefugees.org/volunteer/

If you live in London help fill the emergency Lesvos container, leaving on 18^th November: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdhpliLuzK5KbGirCVWSf_Fm99x7aQ4P8HgrYV8OrRPiGX1Sg/viewform

Read the report on the refugee crisis: https://helprefugees.org/news/a-brief-timeline-of-the-human-rights-situation-in-calais/

Write to your MP about the need to reunite refugee families: https://act.helprefugees.org/help-refugees/families-together/refugee-familiestogether/