Catholic charity opens new building for asylum seekers in Calais
Secours Catholique will be hosting refugees in a new building in the town of Calais, France. The charity will also distribute clothing, shoes and other necessities to the refugees in the camp.
Vincent de Connick, manager of Secours Catholique in Calais, stated that the charity aims to give provisions to the refugees in a more pleasant setting.
He said, "For us, it's about having the ability to receive our migrant friends in a different setting, in town, in a more dignified way, for a distribution of clothes where they can have a choice, without needing to queue and with a different type of welcome."
The charity requested donations for the estimated 9,000 people living at the Calais camp. There will be two major distributions every month at Rue de Moscou, according to Caritas Social Action Network (CSAN).
Some of the items that the charity asked for are shoes, tents, jackets, bags, candles, men's trousers, men's jeans, blankets, sleeping bags, soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hats and kitchen utensils.
In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury urged the government to allow 387 refugee children at the Calais camp to enter the U.K. 178 of those children have relatives in the U.K. and the remaining 209 are also eligible to enter the country, according to Citizens U.K.
Christian Aid and Citizens U.K. are holding a summit on Saturday to ask the government to increase its efforts in allowing the entry of refugees fleeing from conflict into the U.K.
The British government plans to build a 4-meter wall to stop the migrants from climbing into trucks headed for Britain. Another Christian charity, Seeking Sanctuary, advised against this.
"I'm far from sure it's the right answer, walls have proved pretty useless in the past, the Berlin Wall of course... People will just go around the end of it I believe," Phil Kerton, a representative of the charity, told Premier radio.
