Tents and sleeping bags were successfully delivered by a charity which has been running humanitarian convoys for decades
Hope and Aid Direct truckAuthor: Zoe Head-ThomasPublished 19 hours ago
A festival salvage operation led by the charity Herts for Refugees has successfully been delivered to northern France by an Essex-based humanitarian organisation.
The items collected this summer will now be distributed to displaced people in Calais and Dunkirk.
Founded in 1999, Hope and Aid Direct has spent nearly three decades transporting humanitarian aid to people in crisis zones across Europe.
Its leader, Charles Storer, explained the charity’s purpose and said: “Hope, we’re trying to tell people in war zones essentially and in desperation that there are people who care.
“Aid because we’re sending physical aid to those people.
“And the direct was all about the fact that, largely until Brexit and until around 2020, we were actually taking the stuff in our own trucks and working with charities in each location and going out and distributing the aid.”
This year, Hope and Aid Direct was responsible for loading and transporting the salvaged festival items collected by Herts for Refugees, who gathered around 2,470 tents and 1,750 sleeping bags.
Those items are now being distributed to charities on the ground in Northern France, including Refugee Mobile Support, Care 4 Calais, Refugee Women’s Centre and Utopia 56.
Herts for Refugees relies heavily on the logistics and networks of its long-term partner, Hope and Aid Direct.
Mr Storer stressed the importance of partnership in the process: “It’s essential that we work with other people both on the from the perspective of getting the humanitarian aid, and working with the charities in the countries that we go to.
“It’s all about networking and it’s all about making contact with people so that we can cooperate.”
Mr Storer also reflected on the wider conditions facing asylum seekers in Calais and Dunkirk.
He said: “These people that are refugees or asylum seekers, whichever terminology you want to use, they’re people. They’re families with children and they’re exactly the same as everybody else. And if they are needing help, then that’s what the charity is all about. We’re trying to help.”
While emphasising the humanitarian approach of Hope and Aid Direct, Mr Storer acknowledged the ongoing political challenges surrounding refugee support.
“Our strap line on the side of our trucks, which you’ve probably seen, is we take aid, not sides. And that’s really important. We all live on the same planet. We’re all people. We’re all human beings,” he added.
The work of Herts for Refugees and Hope and Aid Direct comes as thousands of asylum seekers in Northern France face regular camp dismantling and loss of belongings, leaving them dependent on emergency aid from charities.
With this operation over, the Essex-based humanitarian operation is preparing for a set of deliveries, to Ukraine this time.