Looking back to this time last year when I was considering how to have Christmas in my garage, I for one did not think that a year on I would be writing the next Christmas edition facing not dis-similar challenges!
As a charity we are also continuing to face challenges that are COVID related, but this year we have had the added fun of Brexit with the joyous red tape and bureaucracy that this has delivered.
The challenges for the people we continue to support also look very similar, however for many, the challenges of COVID and Brexit feel like small fry compared to the problems that have caused them to flee their homes and head to Europe, among other places. The rise again of the Taliban, the ongoing security challenges in Syria, the rebuilding of Lebanon after the catastrophic explosion in Beirut and the war in Yemen that has left over 4m people displaced and over 20m in need of humanitarian assistance have all had a huge knock-on effect to arrival numbers into the EU and UK and that’s before we even consider the many issues in Africa. Given these constant humanitarian crises, Hope and Aid Direct will continue to provide aid and support where we can to whom we can because at the heart of what we do, we take aid not sides.
We are aware that over the past couple of years, that have somewhat blurred into one, our ability to engage the many supporters and volunteers has been limited but as we have mentioned over this period we have been battling many challenges including the constraints around the movement of people, the withdrawal of many NGO’s from Greece due to various NGO registration requirements imposed by the government, the import/export paperwork requirements to get goods into France and the Greek government imposing import duty and VAT on the value of loads imported into Greece. We have been trying to navigate our way through these issues and recently we found a route into France and were able to deliver to Calais, something we want to do more of in the New Year. Greece has remained off limits, but we are getting much much closer.
It may often feel to those who have not been directly involved in these issues that we haven’t been that busy, but you would be very wrong. Here is a summary of the aid and projects that we have been involved in over the past couple of years.
2020
- Greece – Lesvos/Samos – Trucks sent once to Samos plus we shipped 4 x 40ft Containers
- Greece – £4700 purchase of SAR navigation equipment for Attika Lesvos RIB to help with at sea rescue
- France – Calais/Dunkirk – Two trips
- UK – PPE hospital deliveries – Many trips to various hospitals, mainly in the South East of England
2021
- France – Calais – One trip following the Reading Festival Salvage which allowed us to deliver many tents and sleeping bags
- Croatia – post-earthquake £2100 purchase of heaters
- UK – Napier Barracks – Deliveries mainly of blankets
- UK – Colchester hotel – Delivery mainly of hoodies and shoes
- Europe – The Walk – Little Amal – Logistics support with volunteer drivers
- Greece – A container of Crocs were taken via Christian Refugee Relief
- A donation of required items to TEECH for Moldova
- €1,000 donation to support lawyers in Samos
- £2,000 donation to Aryana Aid in Afghanistan
- Ongoing Facilitation of Pasta purchases for Refugee Community Kitchen (RCK)
- Charity shop premises move for another refugee focused charity
As you will see we have been anything other than quiet….
That said a lot of what we have been involved in has been different to our standard operating model of the past 20 years or so. Given that, we decided to get a wider view of our activities to see what our volunteers and supporters felt we were doing right and where we should focus our attention over the coming year. We sent a survey to roughly 50 supporters and as they say, The results are in!
- A high level summary of the questionnaire results show that everyone who responded was happy with our activities during the COVID crisis and post Brexit and for the most part were happy about how we communicated to people, although clearly this is something we need to be very aware of and continue to work on so that everyone has all of the information via whichever channel people want to turn to be that the website, Instagram or these newsletters.
- The overriding majority of people in favour of us still supporting the European migrant crisis, and in relation to the challenges surrounding entering Greece, 70% of people feel we should keep banging on doors, for now at least, so we will be doing that and not giving up!
- 80% of respondents would like us to help refugees in the UK and a large percentage also suggested that we should not just focus on the UK or Europe but look further afield in addition to the work that we currently do with the focus being mainly on Poverty and Humanitarian issues as well as UK logistics, such as the movement of goods.
- We had mixed views in terms of the environmental impacts of what we do, so as a separate project we are hoping to be able to complete an environmental impact assessment of some of our main activities.
Given the results of the survey, at a recent meeting of the trustees and various other key individuals we have decided to take on board all of your comments and make this the basis of our activities for 2022, subject of course to whatever the world decides to throw at us. So for the coming year we will continue our efforts in terms of import and entry requirements to all parts of Europe so we can continue to support refugee communities wherever they may be, along with supporting additional projects that support refugees on an ad-hoc basis and further talks will be undertaken particularly with regards to the ongoing situation in Afghanistan to see how and if we can continue to help the many refugees in this part of the work.
There is also some immediate work that needs to be done, as requested, closer to home. Making enquiries among other NGO’s that deal with refugee issues in the UK and Europe we have established that Care4Calais are in need of logistical help. They have a lot of aid that needs moving from a variety of drop off sites to their warehouses following a big Afghanistan related appeal and we will be helping them complete this. This will be the first step in helping refugees in the UK and once this aid is in the correct place we can look how we can help further.
We are still a couple of drivers short for this project so if you want to help with driving and / or if you have a van that can be used please do get in touch and we will pass your details onto Bernie who is co-ordinating this project for us.
We are also looking to get some trucks over to Calais in the New Year, a trip where we are considering spending a few days over there to help the charities that are still operating in the area such as RCK. Of course at the moment with Covid restrictions how this trip pans out is a bit up in the air, but we may be calling on volunteers for this trip. We will let you know as soon as we know more.
