On Sunday we received what will perhaps be our most important delivery of the year.
Over the summer months last year our partners at HertsforRefugees organised and carried out several salvage operations at large music festivals across the UK. During these salvage operations dozens of tireless volunteers collected tents and sleeping bags that had been left behind by festival goers.
At Reading Festival alone the salvage team gathered hundreds of tents and sleeping bags. These were then packed into trucks, to then be brought over to our warehouse in north France. We cannot thank Angus Clark, Flip, Mark and all involved enough for all of their time and effort spent gathering this vital equipment.
The next hurdle was of course getting it here! Transporting aid over the border post-brexit has become an incredibly complicated and expensive task so we would like to thank everyone involved in this arduous process!
Our team on the ground were delighted to see the arrival of the Hope and Aid Direct team on Sunday afternoon, lead by the inspiring Charles Storer. What followed was an intense few hours of unloading and sorting as the contents were stacked and shelved accordingly throughout the warehouse.
Thanks as well to the crew at One and All Aid who also sent over a huge load of much needed mixed NFI!
We simply cannot emphasise the importance of this delivery enough. These tents and sleeping bags will allow us to continue distributing throughout the rest of this winter and into the coming spring and summer.
At MRS we believe that tents should be available to people sleeping rough all year round, regardless of the temperature. It offers privacy and dignity in a situation that otherwise offers very little.
Again, we would like to thank everyone who was involved in the gathering, loading, transporting and unloading of this precious cargo.
MRS is currently the only organisation on the ground distributing these essential items on a daily basis. Without this delivery we would not be able to continue doing this.
Thank you.
If you would like to support our work you can donate via Facebook or towards our ongoing winter fundraiser via the link below: