Eviction

Refugee Community Kitchen and our awesome sister orgs. continue to dig deep to help people, people who are not only displaced and far from home but who are being tortured with non-sensical acts of disruption by our governments.

In the last few days, hundreds of people, including many families, unattended minors and hundreds of young men have-with no notice or information- been rounded up and loaded by force into coaches and driven away, away from the small communities they rely on for survival.
Incredibly, those coaches then drove round in circles, for the whole day only to come back to Dunkirk to dump them in the same place they took them from.

We understand the difficulties the local authority have with no government support but this behaviour resembles old school fascist actions designed only with the intention being of breaking people's moral.

Today the people are not broken. 
Today they are not abandoned.

We continue to come together, to pool our energy and resources and will carry on supporting these people and hundreds of others with good food love, humanity, fairness today and tomorrow and there on after!

Big thank you for all the love and support, especially to all the volunteers on the ground for adapting, chopping, cooking and providing unwavering service through tough times. 
We salute you ❤️🙏❤️

Thank you Bean :)

THANK YOU!

Big big big thanks for Bean for well over a year of amazing service in Calais (and over two years of supporting refugees).

Thank you for your level-headed, dedicated, humble leadership- you kept our kitchen in top notch standards. We will miss you!!!

So many amazing people have passed through Refugee Community Kitchen- we love you all!

Thank you Riverside Refugee Community Kitchen

We just wanted to say thank you to the wonderful people at Riverside Refugee Community Kitchen who have tirelessly shown up at Cardiff Farmers' Markets every Sunday for over two years.

It's efforts like these that have made it possible for us to serve over 2.2 million hearty, delicious meals to people in need over the last two years.

We're currently serving up to 1700 meals a day! We can't do this with out your donations and fundraising efforts, so please continue sharing and giving and doing what you can to stand for love! -> bit.ly/rckdonate

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Riverside Refugee Community Kitchen is feeling grateful.22 August 2018 · 

So occasionally I have the pleasure of giving the total amount raised for Refugee Community Kitchen at our stall at the Cardiff Riverside Market since August 2016. Every penny raised is transferred over and to date we have raised £15,316.60. That's 30,600 meals for refugees. Thank you so much for all your donations and please keep supporting us as sadly the need is as great as ever.

GROUND UPDATE

There are up to 700 people, including many families, living rough in Dunkirk. We've encountered at least 70 children under the age of 10.

WE NEED YOUR HELP! We are feeling a lot of financial pressure as we are currently serving over 1300 meals a day. We're supporting those 700 people, plus 300 more in Calais as well as providing food to over 100 people living in unofficial camps in the region. And more people are arriving daily!

From brutal heat to pouring rain, and almost constant evictions/clearances by the authorities, this summer has been miserable. Tensions are high as large groups of people try to live together in a very limited amount of tents (hundreds were confiscated last week) or survive under shared pieces of plastic tarpaulin. Despite these horrible conditions people continue to show resilience.

We are so grateful for our volunteers and our sister groups Help Refugees, L'Auberge des Migrants, Dunkirk / Dunkerque Refugee Women's Centre, Refugee Info Bus حافلة المعلومات للاجئين مسیر راهنمای پناهندگان, Utopia 56, Refugee Youth Service, Mobile Refugee Support and everyone else who is tirelessly providing support and solidarity through these deplorable conditions.

Besides increasing numbers, Eid is next week and we'd like to make it special, so right now we need funds more than anything.

Please spread the word and donate what you can!

It's #RefugeeWeek2018!

It's #RefugeeWeek2018! We don't often share photos of the people we serve or of our food distributions because we are very serious about creating safe spaces and don't generally allow photography. That being said, we are run by people for people! Here's an email that wrenched our hearts and strengthened our resolve:

Re: Hello everyone my name's ***** I'm from Sudan.

"I have been in Calais the jungle and it was one of the most difficult times I have ever lived in. I have stayed in the forest for nearly a year and a half. I have enjoyed the most beautiful friends in my life. They devoted their time to us and did everything they could to meet our needs of eating, drinking, dressing and treating like never before. After that I was lucky and entered the UK but unfortunately returned me to Italy after a short time because of my fingerprints and here I am back again but settled in France and thank God I've got official papers and permanent residence, but whenever I hear the news of the immigrants, my heart breaks because I have passed through these experiences and I know how to live without freedom and humanity and therefore you are the ones who draw the smile in our faces and the joy in our hearts..."

Sara Pascoe, Aisling Bea & The Guilty Feminist Podcast came to Calais!

Massive thanks to Aisling Bea and Sara Pascoe for telling the world about Refugee Community Kitchen on the The Guilty Feminist Podcast!

While the entire episode is amazing, if you scroll to 1:15 you can hear them talk about their experience at Refugee Community Kitchen.

Some of our favorite quotes include:

"They make gorgeous, wonderful food every single day. And it's the best disco I've ever been to, the vibe is great. There's a huge amount of energy...If you think you're too busy, if you go for a day, you'll be a pair of extra hands and an influx of energy."

There are so many words, 'refugee, migrant, immigrant' that make people faceless, they're dehumanized and the point of Refugee Community Kitchen isn't just to provide food so that people don't die, it's giving them some human interaction....

There's a sort of feeling of fear in the world where everything's so overwhelming, I'd rather take a nap and hide. We have to make a decision as humans and go, "I don't know what to do but today [to fix the world] I'm going to give you a hot meal and I'm not going to give up being a human and I'm not going to stop seeing you as a human... If you go out and you volunteer, the decision is 'today I'm going to go out and be human and I'm going to look at you in the eyes, we are both just humans trying to get through the day and there's no bigger solution than that." - Aisling Bea

Give it a listen!

Please support Refugee Community Kitchen during Ramadan!

We are doing our best to support people who are observing Ramadan while living rough in Calais and Dunkirk by distributing fresh fruit, dates, flapjacks and boiled eggs (on top of 1000-1200 hot meals day)!

Each pack only costs £.80 and will hopefully make someone's Ramadan a little brighter, please share & donate what you can!

Doing our best

We are doing our best to support people who are observing Ramadan while living rough in Calais and Dunkirk by distributing fresh fruit, dates, flapjacks and boiled eggs (on top of 1000-1200 hot meals day)!

Each pack only costs £.80 and will hopefully make someone's Ramadan a little brighter, please share & donate what you can!