Care4Calais - 2022 Christmas Fundraiser

Let’s make Christmas special for refugees this year with our Christmas fundraiser. Care4Calais is providing emergency aid to people seeking asylum in Wimbledon, Kingston and Epsom. As the holiday season approaches, the excitement of giving and sharing gifts grows. Many of us await the season to finally enjoy the humbling sentiment this time of year brings, and refugees and asylum seekers should be a part of this experience as well. We therefore would like to ask you to share and give by donating gift cards through Care4Calais' Christmas fundraiser this year.

Care4Calais has been helping and supporting asylum seekers arriving in the UK since 2020, providing them with essentials, such as food, clothes and toiletries. Volunteers of the organisation also help by being a friendly face and giving assistance with more complex health or immigration issues. While providing direct aid to approximately 3,500 asylum seekers in 40 hotels across the UK, Care4Calais has also been actively highlighting the unsustainable living conditions in many detention centres.

Asylum seekers are also given access to healthcare, getting them registered with doctors as well as to legal teams to help with their asylum claims, and to education and language training to create more opportunities for them to prosper. But most importantly, Care4Calais makes sure to welcome these vulnerable members of our society, combating the ‘Hostile Environment’ narrative endorsed by the UK Government, and integrating people into a place of safety, solidarity and opportunity.

The holiday season motivates us to want to equally create a wholesome environment of giving and sharing for everyone this year. We would therefore like to empower asylum seekers by handing out gift cards for Sainsbury’s, toiletry gift boxes and toys. The gift cards will enable people to buy Christmas food and gifts for their loved ones just like everyone else during this festive period.

For this year’s Christmas fundraiser, gift cards are the most needed thing, and toiletry and toy donations are also very much appreciated. Christmas should be magical for each one of us, as it is all about spreading joy and love in the form of gifts and generous gestures. Everyone should be able to experience and take part in this tradition, and these gift cards and boxes aim to achieve exactly this: to empower vulnerable members of our society to make Christmas a special time for them and their loved ones. Because they too can celebrate this joyous occasion, just like you and me.

Donate gift cards and toys until Friday, December 9th, and let’s make Christmas for refugees magical this year!