At the beginning of the month, we were watching our containers of stock quickly become emptier and emptier. The lack of festival salvage left us with very little to continue distributions with. However, due to the overwhelming response to our call for aid from our network of donors and supporters, we now have enough stock to safely continue all of our standard services and distributions into this winter period.
Our initial thanks go once again towards Andrea, Wilma and Vanessa of Stand by You Foundation for their incredible and hasty response. In addition to the donations brought two weeks ago, Wilma joined us again last week with a trailer-full of excellent quality sleeping bags, one of our most desperately needed items.
Secondly, we’d like to again thank Charlotte of the Belgian Aid Network for bringing another van full of much-needed donations, including bags of high quality, pre-sorted clothing, as well as many sleeping bags, blankets and tents. Additionally, we’d like to thank Dorothy, Patrick and Monica Knijf for their generous assistance in sourcing blankets, tents and shoes. We regularly see these two dedicated individuals on-site and are glad to be able to distribute these highly-sought items on their behalf. Another huge thank you to Jacolien and Arlette of Share to Serve for sourcing us 1000 thick, high-quality blankets.
As always, our dear friends in Cornwall and the south-west continue to be an invaluable asset, as they have been for the past three years. We would like to wish a huge thanks to Eileen for making a trip over here and to Shelley, Glyn and Ilka of One and all Aid, Falmouth and Penryn Welcome Refugee and OHOB Ltd - Open Hearts Open Borders for the sourcing and delivery of a huge amount of excellent and varied donations. Tents, sleeping bags, blankets, winter clothing, food for our Food Pack Project and even electronics and smartphones for our Smartphone Repair Project. These unsung heroes have been dedicatedly sending aid to us since 2017, as well as sourcing items for Greece and Syria.
Furthermore, we would like to extend our gratitude towards Sanne Van Alphen for all of the tents, sleeping bags and clothes that we will be able to collect later this month and to Michelle Wright and those at Gent4Humanity for their hard work over these past weeks gathering more desperately needed bedding. Equally, the amazing Sanne De Bree Florijn of Hulp Konvooi Veluwe has been vigilantly raising money for us to purchase vital equipment in bulk.
In addition to all of this, our dear friend and UK partner Flip of People Not Borders has been unabatingly gathering and buying vital items such as shoes, rain jackets, tarpaulin and sleeping bags, having procured 53 boxes for us already! We must also extend our gratitude to our other incredible UK partners Refugee Compassion for their amazing donation of 153 brand new pairs of shoes!
We are also very grateful to have been included as beneficiaries of James J Dart’s amazing fundraiser, #LetsRaiseMore for Refugees than Farage Gets Likes. This incredible endeavour raised over £40,000 to be split between many organisations supporting refugees all over Europe.
Finally, we would like to thank all of our regular donors and Patreon subscribers who donate monthly.
Without the support of our extraordinary network, and people like yourselves, we would be unable to continue operating to the extent we do