Care4Calais is a volunteer run refugee charity working with refugees in the UK, France and Belgium.

Locally we have a coordinator who oversees the support of asylum seekers and refugees in the South of Essex (Basildon, Brentwood, Southend and Thurrock). Volunteers are needed to work alongside the coordinator and support local asylum seekers and refugees in the following ways:

– Help with collecting, sorting, distribution and/or storage of donations (e.g clothes, shoes, etc). This could be for individual families/persons or at hotels.

– Support to facilitate and/or accompany to appointments, (e.g registering with GP, assisting to get to hospital appointments, local groups, positive activity, etc).

– Offer English practice opportunities, one to one or run a small, informal group.

– Befriending.

– Advise us of any local community groups / services / positive activities we can link with in order to provide support to families and single people placed in our area.

– Advise us of any [local] companies that may be willing to donate any goods or services we can pass onto our asylum seekers (clothes, toiletries, haircuts, beauty treatments, activities, etc).

Skills

For face to face contact with service users, you will need to have a DBS, do a short safeguarding module and attend a virtual induction meeting.