CamCRAG is a registered charity who organise regular weekend volunteer convoys from Cambridge to Calais. We also collect donations and funds to help refugees in Europe and beyond.
CamCRAG is a registered charity who organise regular weekend volunteer convoys from Cambridge to Calais. We also collect donations and funds to help refugees in Europe and beyond.

Projects

Over the past five years we have organised a variety of our own projects, supported numerous projects in Europe, and taken part in various fundraisers with other charities and NGOs.

Ongoing Projects
Lebanon Free Shop Logo
Lebanon Free Shop

In the Autumn of 2021 we began working with Feed the Hungry in Coventry to send most of our donations of clothing, particularly those unsuitable for Calais, to the Lebanon Free Shop for refugees in Bekaa. In January 2022 we gave £1,100 to the project to purchase winter clothing.

CamCRAG Ponchos
CamCRAG Poncho Project
The Poncho Project makes ponchos and snoods for refugees in France from blankets purchased in the UK. It is an excellent way to support refugees with your time, either at home or at our communal craft sessions. Anyone can join in, regardless of experience of equipment.

Previous Projects

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CHEERing STARS

In February 2022 we gave £1,000 to CHEERing STARS, a project to promote womens’ soccer and other activities in Malakasa, north of Athens.

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2022 Big Sleepout

In February 2022 we held our fourth sponsored sleepout and winter fair at St Giles’ Church in Cambridge, which raised over £20,000 for the charity and local homeless organisation Cambridge Street Aid.

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Ioannina Dignity Centre

In January 2022 we gave £2,500 to the Ioannina Dignity Centre, run by Refugee Support Europe, to buy office equipment and furniture for the centre which provides food and other essential services to hundreds of refugees in northern Greece.

Pallet of Fish appeal

In January 2021 we sent a pallet of 4000 tins of sardines to Calais Food Collective after they appealed for tinned fish to help feed the communities they support.

2020 Big Sleepout

In February 2020 we organised our third sponsored sleepout, raising almost £15,000 for CamCRAG and homeless charities in Cambridge.

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Support for Watershed

In September 2019 we gave a grant of £3,000 to the Watershed Foundation, who maintain and expand essential WASH facilties in Moria camp on Lesvos

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Tentfest 2019

In September 2019 we held an all day tentfest to check, clean and repair salvaged festival tents. Over 70 volunteers did amazing work and processed almost 300 tents!

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Salvaged Sleeping bags

Over the summer of 2019 dozens of volunteers in communities around the East of England helped wash almost 1,000 sleeping bags salvaged from music festivals.

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‘Home’ Art Exhibition

We held an art exhibition in June 2019 to highlight the refugee crisis and homelessness, with proceeds from sales and donations at the event going to CamCRAG and local homeless charities.

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RCK Funding 2018 onwards

From early in 2018 until June 2019 we supported Refugee Community Kitchen in Calais with £1,000 of direct funding almost every month. We also purchased new equipment, such as a set of new knives early in 2019.

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The Cambridge-Calais sleepout 2019

Following the success of 2018’s sleepout, we once again organised a sponsored sleepout at the end of January. Our volunteers braved a windy night, some of them sleeping in homemade tents made by the SOS Tents Project, raising over £10,000 in the process for CamCRAG and The Whitworth Trust, a local charity which supports homeless young women in the area.

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LOVE4LESVOS

The £25,000 inter-association fundraiser #LOVE4LESVOS was set up in 2018 to support refugee families trapped in the overcrowded camps on the Greek island of Lesvos. CamCRAG provided £1,500 in cash towards the funding, as well as publicising the campaign.

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Calais Laundry

In March 2018 we gave £500 to help set up the Calais Laundry project, which is installing washing machines in a shipping container at the Help Refugees warehouse in Calais, to reduce the amount of clothing that is discarded by refugees who have limited access to washing facilities and no access to a laundry.

Homeless on Paris streets
Emergency Paris funding

In February 2018, as snow began to fall in Paris, we authorised £1000 of emergency funds, much of which was spent on hand and body warming gel packs. Two of our volunteers in Paris distributed most of these within three days of us purchasing them, and the remainder were given to Paris Refugee Ground Support and Solidarithé to distribute. We also bought Solidarithé some paper cups and printing supplies so that they can continue to offer hot drinks and information to those sleeping rough in the city.

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A tale of two cities – the big Cambridge-Calais sleepout fundraiser 2018

At the end of January 2018 some of our brave volunteers slept outside in Cambridge for a night as part of a day of events to raise money for CamCRAG and local homeless group Wintercomfort, raising over £11,000 for both charities.

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Humans 4 Humanity

In December 2017 Humans 4 Humanity, who provide aid to the Moria camp in Lesvos, Greece, lost a sponsor and found themselves unable to pay for their hire van, with which they transport aid and refugees from their warehouse to the camp. CamCRAG was able to respond within three days and send them £1000 via Donate4Refugees, to cover a month’s van rental.

#Boots1000
Boots1000

Responding to incidents of trench foot among refugees sleeping rough in northern France, this was an inter-association project to raise £20,000 by Christmas 2017 to buy 1000 waterproof boots for refugees in Calais and Dunkirk. By the end of 2017 we had together raised over £22,000, and the boots had been distributed to those in need by Help Refugees and Care4Calais.

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Solidarithé

Volunteers working in Paris over the winter of 2016/17 realised that a lack of information, as much as food and clothing, was a major obstacle for refugees living on the streets. Their response was Solidarithé, a small grassroots organisation providing daily hot drinks to refugees in Paris, alongside information on where to access showers, legal advice and other services. CamCRAG provided funds and support at an early stage. Since inception the project has grown, and the daily distribution now regularly includes art therapy and French lessons, now run out of Sciences Po University.

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Laundry Project

In Spring 2017, CamCRAG worked together with CalAID and Utopia 56 to fund a blanket washing project in Paris. Utopia 56 had stored many blankets discarded on the streets of Paris due to them becoming wet, lice or scabies-ridden, pepper-sprayed, or people having to leave them behind due to being suddenly moved on by the authorities. CamCRAG spent £1,500 on the deep clean and sterilisation of 2,000 blankets at a local laundry so they could be given out to refugees forced to sleep on the streets. Not only was this cheaper than buying new blankets, but also a more environmentally friendly option than simply sending the blankets to landfill.

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Bivvy bags

At the start of 2017 temperatures were plummeting to -7°C in French cities and there was great concern about the welfare of refugees sleeping rough. CamCRAG collaborated with other refugee support groups, including Herts for Refugees and Side by Side, and purchased military surplus sleeping bags and bivvy bags (waterproof covers that make it feasible to survive in a sleeping bag even in the rain and snow). Teams of volunteers repaired the bags with some stitching. Along with some newly purchased bivvy bags, these were rapidly delivered to Calais and Paris and distributed to those in need.

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Hope Café

In June of 2017, via one of our volunteers who made a trip to help in Greece, we were able to provide £920 worth of food, nappies and toiletries to the Hope Café, a new organisation created by previous Calais volunteers, which welcomes and feeds refugee families in Athens.

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Nappy convoy

Refugee workers in Greece sent an urgent call-out for help over the summer of 2017 to provide vital items for women in refugee camps in the area. CamCRAG formed a project team which collected hundreds of nappies and sanitary towels. These were delivered to the CalAID warehouse in Slough, from where they were sent to Ioannina in Northern Greece and distributed by CalAID.

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Battery Packs

In October 2016, we received an urgent call-out from volunteers at L’Auberge des Migrants, the warehouse supporting refugees in the then ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais. Local authorities had announced a date for closure of the camp, and only certain volunteers had been issued passes to attend the demolition. As previous partial demolitions had been carried out with violence, and the rumours were that shops and communal buildings, including electricity supplies, would be the first point of target for demolition, volunteers with passes were concerned that they would have no way of reporting on the demolition and documenting any human rights abuses if their phones ran out of batteries. Within a day CamCRAG was able to purchase 50 battery packs, worth more than £600, and charge them overnight. One of our volunteers delivered the packs to Calais the following day, where they were distributed to volunteers in time for the demolition.

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Phone Credit for Refugees

Since its inception in February 2016, Phone Credit for Refugees has received over £2,400 from CamCRAG to help provide vital phone credit to both adult and child refugees across Europe and beyond.

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Techfugees and IT equipment

CamCRAG assisted in forming and funding a project to update the warehouse IT systems for L’Auberge des Migrants, by introducing technical expertise from Techfugees Cambridge and facilitating funding from a generous corporate donor.

We have also supported several technological/educational initiatives such as taking re-purposed laptops to the Jungle Books Kids Café for IT skills training and general education (before the demolition of the camp), helping to source laptops for admins of Phone Credit for Refugees; and arranging for laptops and phones donated from Cambridge Assessment to be delivered to Refugee Youth Service for their mobile youth service project.