Organisers are ‘thrilled’ at the response to their appeal for warm winter clothing

A community campaign to collect items for Help Refugees in Calais - launched through St Michael’s Church in Shute - has proved a great success.

Donations came in from across the area including pupils at Shute Primary School, Woodroffe School, in Lyme Regis and from Kilmington and Shute parishes.

Just before Christmas, volunteers helped to bundle socks, scarves, underwear and gloves to help people stay warm as temperatures drop over the winter months.

Shute resident, Samantha Knights QC, coordinating the collection at Shute said: “Help Refugees are doing amazing work and providing necessary humanitarian aid in Calais.

“We are thrilled to see such a heartening and immediate local response.”

As part of the campaign local woman Alice Kerr, who spent almost a year living in The Jungle camp at Calais after leaving school, founding a soup kitchen and a welcome shelter for women and children, gave an inspiring talk to the leavers at The Woodroffe School in December.

* The local appeal is part of Help Refugees’ wider campaign following the demolition of the Calais Jungle camp two years ago. Help Refugees have recently published a well-evidenced report into the situation today as it has developed over the last two years. In the process of demolition, and despite the warning by NGOs working in the area, over a hundred unaccompanied children went missing, and children as young as eight were forced to sleep outside. Today thousands of people including single women and children continue to rough-sleep in dangerous conditions exposed to what appears to be excessive police violence, the report finds.