Summit Blog: Working in Crisis - Collaboration and Leadership

This intimate and eye-opening session took place between Paul Hutchings and Julia Chanteray. Julia, from the Joy of Business, was interviewing Paul from Refugee SupportEurope about his work across Europe.

We are often pressured by the critical moments in our work, however, Pauls work blows this out of the park.

Paul owned a successful market research consultant based in Brighton since 2005, but after all the horror he had been hearing about refugees in Greece and across Europe, he made a commitment to making a difference.He was frustrated with the way the crisis was being dealt with and thought that the current institutions weren’t doing enough, so one weekend Paul hired a van and set off into the unknown.

The story starts in Calais, in the Jungle refugee encampments. He joined in with the classic ‘Calais way’ of supporting the camps. He filled up the van with supplies and drove into the jungle to give it to the refugees. At first, he would try to make the process structured and keep people in a line, but soon enough people would break and push forwards to fight over the supplies. It was an undignified process and often a lot of people were left without supplies.

Paul and his partner John Sloan learnt from this experience and set out to Greece, to bring dignity to their support. At the time Greece was going through an economic crisis and had closed its border, increasing the pressure. What’s more is that Europe had seemed to close its doors on refugees.

Refugee Support introduced a point scheme to provide dignity on a refugee camp in Greece. They created a shop in the camps in which each family is given a certain amount of points they can use to swap for supplies. Each family was given a set shopping day per week to avoid overcrowding. 100 points are given per adult, 75 points per child, and 150 points for every pregnant woman. Having a point system lets people choose the items they actually need and gives them a more normal experience of shopping for food for their families, rather than fighting for it from a truck in the jungle.

Aside from the shop, Paul and John provided clothes, shoes (which are a big problem in refugee camps), a language school, a community kitchen, two playgrounds, an outdoor gym and when the cold weather arrived they supplied heating into all the caravans. I find it incredible that Paul and John have done this all within 12 months.

Throughout the interview, Julia asked some very good questions. I had personally been receiving Julia’s marketing emails for a while now, so was looking forward to seeing her in person. She also related a lot of the situations into the ethics and techniques of business. I expected nothing less from someone so joyful about business. She related Pauls' work in Calais to business ethos, that working to deliver the best possible service with the tools available.

Paul was asked, “how do you say no to people when you know it will break your heart?”. He shared with us that saying no was a large part of the job. For example, because of the high demand for shoes in the camps, if they said yes to one person asking for shoes, the next day 20 more people would come, and the day after that 100 people would come asking for shoes. It’s incredibly hard to say no to someone when you know you have a cabinet full of shoes, but it’s for keeping the consistency of delivering supplies to people. Until the pressure becomes too big, saying no is needed, but of course if the need is too high, it’s impossible to say no.

Because the refugees in the camp have been disappointed by a lot of institutions in their past, Refugee Support only wanted to say yes to the things they could do, and avoid disappointment.

Refugee Support Europe also has projects in Alexandreia, Filippiada, and Katsikas. In 12 months Paul and John have helped tens of thousands of people, organised a team of over 400 volunteers and raised around £250,000. The work they are doing across Greece and Europe is incredible and they have done a great job in the crisis.

If you would like to help Refugee Support, you can find out more about them and donate at http://www.refugeesupport.eu/

Thanks to Jake Wharton, Marketing Assistant at Ingenio Technologies, for writing this blog. 

Ingenio Technologies is a client-centric IT support and telecoms company based near Brighton. To find out more visit www.computer-eyez.com/ or call 01273 806211

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