For the young refugee children sleeping rough in Calais “Jungle” – one of the largest makeshift camps at the border between France and UK – access to a support group is critical. As unaccompanied minors, their families are often far away, and many haven’t seen them in months or even years. Especially now, during the COVID19 crisis,resources and the presence of charity-based organisations in the field is scarce; these children need help from individuals more than ever.
We’re proud to partner with front line organisations such as Refugee Youth Service, dedicated to the mission of creating immediate and lasting change in the lives of unaccompanied children and young people on the move in Europe. Our work is aimed at providing these young people with safer spaces, enabling them to access legal and social support from trained professionals, obtain legal documents and proper identification they often miss. We’re also engaging key stakeholders in fighting police brutality these children are facing on a regular basis.
COVID-19 has disrupted this important work on the ground, with volunteers and paid staff reducing the face-to-face time spent with children, and forcing increased engagement through the mobile phone. We work with them via telephone to facilitate access to medical services, child protection, and other sources of support. However, most of these children do not have phones – the lack of access to this simple resource greatly diminishes our ability to help these children.
Please join us in helping these children on the move to feel safer and more secure:
Hundreds of children will benefit from your donations in these trying times:
- $25 will provide phone credit for one month, enabling a child to remain in communication with their caseworker, as well as their families at home and other children who they are on the move with and can become separated from. This has become even more crucial due to COVID19, which has added further barriers to maintaining face-to-face contact.
- $50 will provide a young person with a durable budget smartphone. Smartphones provide the most cost-effective way of maintaining contact as they can utilise cheap mobile data plans and can access free WIFI when available. Sadly, Refugee Youth Service sometimes has to replace phones that are taken from children by the police and arbitrarily destroyed in front of them.
- $100 will provide a young person with a phone, one month’s credit, and a power bank that will triple the lifetime of the phone’s battery supply. With a countrywide lock-down in place, accessing charging points has become almost impossible.
Even a small contribution will help support these children, for whom even a phone is an impossibly difficult commodity to attain. Help bring security and support to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
*World Identity Network (WIN) Foundation is a registered not-for-profit pending the 501(c)3 status, therefore please note that contributions are not yet tax deductible.