Fundraising to help refugees in Calais

In 4 years the Syria civil war has claimed 200,000 Syrian lives and forced 4 million refugees to flee the country. These people are desperate for food, shelter and stability. The drastic and dangerous methods people are taking to try to find refuge shows the dire straits they are in. The harrowing image of the boy lying dead on the beach has created outrage throughout Europe.

Cameron’s Government has been widely criticised for not doing enough, with smaller European countries like Sweden taking in many more refugees than Britain. According to EuroStat there were 16 countries who accepted more asylum applications than the UK. Between June 2014 and June 2015 the UK took just 166 Syrian refugees.

Germany is preparing to expect 800,000 refugees to arrive this year and has called on its European Partners to do more to help. France and Germany demanded the EU force member countries to take obligatory quotas of refugees and asylum seekers.

It wasn’t long ago that Cameron issued his de-humanising description of these refugees as a “swarm”, a description you’d expect from a drunk racist in the local pub, but not our Prime Minister. Now the pressure has been piled onto him he has made a U-turn and committed to “fulfilling our moral obligations” and is expected to announce the UK will accept thousands more refugees from the Syrian border. What a shame it took an image so heart-breaking to make him act.

In Calais, just a couple of hundred miles from the UK, thousands of refugees still camp in dire conditions. A crowdfunding campaign by charity worker Alastair Higgingbottom, aims to secure the funds needed to deliver a van filled with food and other supplies to ease the suffering. Although the target has been reached, Alastair is now planning to take 3 or 4 vans to Calais and still needs donations to make this happen. There are drop off points in Northampton, Cheltenham, Oxfordshire, and Gloucester. 

Alastair was delighted by the response to this campaign saying, “The more money we can raise the more we can do to improve things over there. If we exceed the target significantly we are planning to take several vans over there. With the weather becoming colder this could be the difference between life and death”

Please do donate what you can and share the campaign on social media. Feel free to contact Alastair via the crowdfunding page for more info.

Website: https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/alastair-higginbottom

Written by Martin Stocks | @Stocks1986