Help 4 Dunkerque
Our Story
One day our friend Clio comes up to us showing a video of the “jungle” of Dunkirk filled with policeman and men in white suits destroying and removing tents belonging to the camp’s refugees. At the end of the video she tells us ‘I cannot stand to se this…I must do something. At the end of the year I will go there to help as much as I can’. A few days later we also agreed to come with her. From there we started organising collection points all over France. After two months of preparation, people contacting us on social media wanting to join us and getting in touch with various associations on site we were ready to leave. We were invited to go to “Hang Arts” near Rennes where we could of spent a week preparing and sorting out the clothes and sleeping material that we were going to bring with us. But we didn’t realise that the collection was going to be that big and soon we understood that the trucks that we had planned on leaving with weren’t enough. We quickly found a solution and had a friend join with his truck which was only meant for charging, the day he agreed to come he went to make his mechanical control and while he was there he weighed his truck full of clothes. Only in his truck we had over 7 tons of material, to this day we aren’t sure how much we had in total but between all our trucks surely it was over 10 tons. Once all the clothes where sorted and all the trucks where filled up, we were ready to leave.
Our Arrival
Once we arrived in Dunkirk we didn’t know what to expect once entered the jungle. We had no idea of the reaction of the people living in these terrible conditions, as far as we knew he had to take good care of our selves. But after the first day we understood that our group and the refugees would get along fine. Our main goal here wasn’t only to give out clothes and make tea for the people, it was mostly to share moments with with them and to stay on a human level, and that’s exactly what we managed to do. They knew our names and we slowly started knowing theirs, day after day we would learn the basic kurdish words to also interact with the non english speaking. Something that really had an impact on us was their love for the music, everyday we would put some speakers where they could share some tracks which would be accompanied by singing and dancing.
We were so impressed on how these people really wanted to be entertained that we started organising events in the jungle where artists from all over France came to participate. On New Years Eve we were more than 30 people whom managed to fit concerts, art workshops, spectacles and fire shows all in one day.
The outcome
Overall the three weeks we stayed in Dunkirk were a great success. Not only we managed to complete our mission, we also came out of the experience with new friends, not only European but also Kurdish, Afghani and Pakistani. We are still today in contact with some of the refugees, some also made it to the U.K.
We were also honoured to meet Charlie and Jed, a couple of English lads who are part of an association called MRS(Mobile Refugee Support) whom are doing a great job supporting the refugees there. On the last day we saw them we promised that we would meet again and next time work side by side. If you want to support their work visit the page
https://www.mobilerefugeesupport.org/
