REFUGEE ACTION
WINTER COAT APPEAL RESPONSE
November 2020
On Wednesday 11th November IGS and the wider Ilkley community collected warm winter coats to support Bradford Charity, Refugee Action. There was an overwhelming response with over 100 bags full of coats. All of them have now been collected by the charity and will go directly to refugee families in Bradford and the surrounding areas to keep them warm this winter.
We have since received the following message from Refugee Action:
We would like to send a HUGE thank you to you, the other staff at IGS who helped make the 'coat collection' last Wednesday a reality (please can you thank the site team for helping load my car on Friday and Ben, Mia and Alex, yr 8, for helping me load up on Wednesday) and most importantly the pupils at IGS and their friends / wider family members who donated winter coats to the Refugee Action call for help.
There are a small local group of us locally who volunteer with Refugee Action's Bradford office. We receive requests for specific items when they have a real need and winter coats was one such request.
We have been overwhelmed with the number of coats collected by yourselves and the wider community.
It is brilliant that, even though things are not quite as we'd like them at the moment, we are able to still show love, care and compassion for those that have less / have a great need.
The fact that we all need to think a little differently at the moment and can still do really incredible things is brilliant and celebrates the best of humanity.
We had already delivered 300 coats into Bradford before last Wednesday's IGS collection.
Last night we finished sorting through the coats that were collected by your school. We estimate IGS collected 700 coats, these will be going to a number of different organisations as well as ensuring that all the families that Refugee Action Bradford support have a warm winter coat.
Tomorrow 260 coats will be going to:
- Caring for Calais; and
- The Red Cross in Bradford.
On Saturday the remaining 440 will be distributed between:
- Refugee Action, a women's refuge in Bradford, BIASAN (an entirely volunteer run charity who support single asylum seekers who currently are hosted in 'hotels');
- St Stephen's which holds a clothing bank for children;
- The Anchor Project (they are a grass roots organisation working in the most challenging areas of inner city Bradford with marginalised communities); and
- A charity in Wakefield who support asylum seekers and refugees.
Refugee Action Bradford are currently supporting families from Eritrea, Albania, Pakistan, Mauritius, Iran / Kurdistan, Iraq / Kurdistan, Nigeria, Sudan, El Salvador, Benin, Honduras, Russia, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka and others. YOU have made a difference to these people's lives, they can now be warm and know that someone cares, this is priceless.
Thank you so much to everybody who donated! You really are making a positive difference!
Click here to see the Ilkley Gazette article.
