so on James pairs
and I don’t get out very much I spend a
huge amount of time on Facebook
I’d probably some of you spend lots of
time on Facebook as well but social
media is a weird place isn’t it people
tend to share lots of carefully angled
selfies of themselves or photos of their
dinner and it looks like they’re having
a really great life but it’s not always
an accurate representation of how things
really are
but I’ve actually got a different
experience of Facebook most the people I
speak to tend to just send me photos of
their hands like a selfie but with just
a hand instead of a face and I’m not
just talking about a few people either I
mean tens of thousands of people send me
photos of their hands over Facebook and
that’s not as weird as it sounds a
photos worth a thousand words right well
I think that depends on if you know what
you’re looking at about three years ago
the refugee crisis broke as a big news
story and my facebook was full of images
of what looked like crazy migrants
running across motorways trying to jump
on moving lorries with the police trying
to control the situation and it just
looked like chaos for everyone involved
but they’re the sort of questions that
give you despair the sort of photos that
give you more questions than answers
like who would run around on a motorway
in front of moving traffic why there’s
so many of them and why they doing it
right in front of the police where did
they come from and at the time David
Cameron described them as a swarm and I
think maybe people do look a bit like
insects if you’re far enough away and
it’s just arms and legs scrambling in a
mass but they weren’t really that far
away they were close enough that you
could if you wanted to go and find out a
bit more about them and refugees are
such a divisive issue people tend to be
very strongly against helping refugees
or very strongly in favor and I think at
the time I didn’t feel a strong sense of
compassion but what I felt was a sense
of curiosity
about the situation and in November 2015
two of my friends are organizing a trip
to the Calais jungle to volunteer to go
and do the usual things that volunteers
do out there distributing shoes and food
and clothes and the rest of it I was
prepared to go and sort through some
clothes in the warehouse if it meant
that I’d get to have a look at the
infamous jungle and I think that’s how
we all felt at the time it’s
kind of made it that way that we were
more curious than compassionate and I
was kind of more tourists than then I
was a volunteer and I think but on the
second date when I went to Calais the
chance came up to go into the jungle to
go into the camp to leave the warehouse
and this was my chance to go and meet
refugees close up like a sort of
long-haired Ross Kemp the problem was
that it was actually a really bad time
to go to the jungle people had been
arriving there in their thousands that
summer and there just wasn’t any
resources I mean we’re talking three
portaloos between two thousand people it
was it was stark and the other thing is
no one told us that when you go into the
Calais jungle you’re supposed to take
off your for the rest of the
yellowjacket that you’ve been wearing in
the warehouse and leave that behind and
so we wandered into the camp with these
fluorescent yellow jackets kind of like
a fluorescent lost sheep I guess and
within about a minute there was this
huge crowd around me of all these people
asking me things in languages so I
didn’t understand frantically tugging on
my arm and begging me for things begging
me for a ten begging me for a blanket
and quickly I realized it was a
different scene to the images that I’d
been seeing on the knees the people who
were asking me for shoes really didn’t
have any shoes they were walking around
barefoot in the mud in November and it
wasn’t just young men like I’d seen on
the news it was there was children there
there was women there there was an
elderly man who had only one leg who led
me to show me where he slept and it
turned out to just be a wet pile of
rubbish and if I’m honest my primary
worries before I’d gone to the jungle
was I thought it was going to be a
lawless place I thought if migrants were
prepared to run across motorways in
front of traffic then maybe they were
prepared to do anything that’s kind of
what it looked like on the knees but
stood there among them with this crowd
around me I sort of realized it wasn’t
me at risk it was it was then who at
risk I was kind of in shock at this
stage and I think when you’re in shock
you’re quite malleable you you kind of
just want the person next to you to take
you by the hand and tell you what to do
and the person next to me was a huge
Sudanese man asking me to put a tent up
for him in the wind
so I had a go at doing that the thing
about the jungle is if you’re ever stood
there wondering what to do you won’t be
stood there for very long because
somebody is going to be grabbing you and
saying please I need help with this and
you just have to do it I mean it’s an
emergency
and that’s what I hadn’t really realized
pines for going to the jungle I knew I
was going to a migrant camp and I knew I
was walking into a crisis of some sort
but I hadn’t really considered that I
was walking into an emergency situation
in the way that if you see an emergency
situation you have to respond to it
you’re kind of responsible you ever had
one of those situations in life where
you have some kind of emergency but
there’s just the right stranger there at
just the right moment just to help you
and to make it better for you
I’ve always driven really unreliable
cars and I remember a few years ago
driving to work and breaking down right
in the middle of a busy roundabout
slap-bang in the middle of the traffic
middle lane and my response to that
situation was just to get out of my car
and start pushing I just kind of wanted
it to be out of the way and within about
two seconds there was these two other
guys who had got out of their cars
they’d seen what was going on and they
were pushing as well and very quickly we
moved my car to the side of the road and
we kind of you know so I said thanks and
they went on their way and just before
they went on their way there was this
moment between us that was like a like a
kind of smug look that we shared like a
like a shared victory that we were all
kind of pleased that we’d managed to get
my rubbish old car to the side of the
road there are moments in life I think
when any of us would help a stranger
there’s certain times when it would be
more instinctive than it would feel like
an inconvenience if you were in a shop
and an elderly person in the queue in
front of you you saw them beginning to
stumble I think it would be instinctive
for you to reach your hand out and try
and steady them rather than just
watching them drop in front of you or if
you were eating dinner in a restaurant
and you saw somebody choking I think
you’d find it difficult to just carry on
eating without reacting in some way to
to what was going on in front of you if
you think of helping people on a scale a
scale of priority and at the top of that
there’s these immediate situations that
you feel compelled to respond to maybe a
loved ones in trouble and you just have
to drop everything and be
for them and then at the other end of
that scale there’s things which there’s
no way you’re going to help with no
chance there’s a friend who wants to
borrow money and they didn’t pay you
back the last three times or a cold call
from a charity that you’re not
particularly interested in and then
sometimes there’s things that are just
so big that it doesn’t seem like there’s
any point in trying to help maybe some
big news story far away and then I think
there’s some stuff that’s in the middle
somewhere if that is a scale then
there’ll be a middle for that scale
things which you’re not really quite
decided about things which you probably
would help with if somebody asked you
but you hadn’t really thought about
helping with them I thought I wonder
what it takes to move something up and
down that scale if something starts at
the bottom or if it starts in the middle
if it starts at the top how I can move
it from one place to another in a
professional setting when you talk about
calculating risk you tend to look at the
seriousness of something if it happened
and the likelihood of it happening and
if both of those factors are reasonably
high then you’ll take preventative
measures to make sure that it doesn’t
happen is why cars are fitted with seat
belts because road accidents really do
happen and the consequences of them are
quite severe but if you change those
factors around if you move one of them
away if you take a situation that’s very
serious but unlikely to happen like a
Godzilla scenario that would be quite a
serious situation probably a lot of
people would die in that situation but
it’s not very likely to happen and
that’s why we’re not all out practicing
big lizard drills just in case and then
you could do it the other way around you
could something that’s very likely to
happen but not particularly serious like
how careful are you about losing pens
maybe you have a nice pen you’re more
careful but we don’t take any serious
precautions against that happening
either and what if there were similar
sums taking place when it comes to
working out whether we help strangers or
whether we help anybody you might be
prepared to leave a good friend to
struggle through something that was
quite minor if you were quite busy at
the time well you might be prepared to
leave a complete stranger that struggles
through something really quite major
again if you were quite busy at the time
and helping just one person that’s
completely different to helping lots of
people or championing a call
the guys who stopped and helped me push
my car to the side of the roundabout
weren’t interested in the wider plight
of people who drive unreliable cars and
they weren’t politically motivated to
push my car to the side of the
roundabout and they hadn’t seen a news
report about it
they were just aren’t going through
they’re going about their day and they
saw a situation in front of them which
instinctively they felt that they needed
to respond to Mohammed the big sudanese
man
tugging my arm in the jungle had made it
to that same place in my list of
priorities we were both stood there next
to each other I’d gone all the way to
the jungle I was there and he was
tugging my arm asking for help putting a
tent up is not really my forte anyway
but putting a tent up in the wind is
even more difficult and putting a tent
up in the wind in the jungle is it’s
like three times more difficult because
the ground is so sandy you can’t use
tent pegs so you have to dig the edges
of the ten in to stop it blowing away
and everywhere you dig there’d be other
broken tents and rusty tin cans and
human excrement quite often and perhaps
I think because it was such a difficult
thing to do by the time you finally put
this tent up between the tourists you’ve
kind of bonded with the person that you
were working with and me and Mohammed
had that same kind of look that shared
victory in the same way that the guys
who’d pushed my car had there wasn’t
really about who had the broken-down car
or who was going to be sleeping in the
tent tonight it was just the fact that
together we’d managed to overcome this
obstacle it wasn’t just Mohammed either
the time I spent in the jungle was full
of those kinds of experiences moving
from one place to another quickly
helping somebody as best you could and
bonding with them a little bit at the
same time and I realized that refugees
weren’t really anything like I thought
they’d be whatever it was I thought
they’d be like sometimes when you see
someone that looks crazy wandering
around in the traffic they might just be
a normal person he’s having a bit of an
emergency and and you might need to help
them and I made quite a few trips to the
jungle after that as many as I could and
I made friends there and we we kept in
touch on Facebook that’s I guess lots of
people do refugees too and we did what
normal people do we we argued about
politics and we argued about religion
music and we shared jokes like for
example in England when we take the take
the mick out of someone for having a
huge old mobile phone we call that a
brick right well in Syria they call that
a shoe which I thought was quite good
I’d gone from being a passive observer
of something that seemed like a huge
crisis far away to feeling but I had
friends immediately caught up in this
refugee crisis itself had gone from
being something that was far away and
unimaginable to a series of close-up
one-to-one encounters with people and my
perception of what refugees I had really
changed
they weren’t dangerous or mysterious or
in any way different to us they were
just funny annoying kind irritating
sometimes they were just normal people
lots of them were very middle class and
it just made me think maybe this is what
the whole world’s like we’ve got all
these cultures nationalities religions
and we’re divided by borders but maybe
just if you go to any neighborhood in
the world you’d meet the same characters
maybe that personality types are just
peppered across them all at random and
all you’d have to do is just begin
mixing with people to find that out and
maybe that’s not such a big revelation
for anyone who’s been outside Norfolk a
bit more often than I had but
for me it was kind of a surprise I
couldn’t keep going back to Calais I had
a job and I didn’t have all that much
money to keep going to France and I
couldn’t keep getting the time off work
to do it
so I went when I could and I took what I
could to help people and when when I
couldn’t go I found out that I could top
up my friends phones online some of the
people in the Calais jungle we’re using
UK SIM cards in their phones the phone
credit is not something I’ve thought
about before but it’s hugely important
to people in a position of displacement
it’s gives them back their voice and it
gives them a little bit of control and
it gives them a chance at organizing
some of their own support networks and
it gives them a chance to speak to their
family most of all I think most
importantly it helps to keep them safe
at the start of February I had an idea I
chatted to lots of refugees online who’d
become my friends and I thought what if
I made a Facebook group
and I added all these refugees who I
talk to there wasn’t loads of them
there’s only maybe four or five at the
time and was really friendly with and I
asked my Facebook friends to join the
group as well and together peer to peer
people could just offer to top their
phones up just a simple idea just
person-to-person I kind of felt like if
people had the chance to my friends had
the chance to meet refugees
person-to-person in the way that I had
then it might shatter some of their
preconceptions about the differences
between us in the way that meeting
refugees persons a person that really
changed my perception people were pretty
skeptical why refugees why phone credit
how could you know you were helping a
real refugee over Facebook and refugees
were pretty skeptical too why would they
help me how can I trust them what if
it’s a trick but it only takes one
it only takes one stranger in the right
place at the right time to make that
difference now I knew the first refugee
he was asking for phone credit was
genuine because I knew him he was my
friend and I’d seen when he slept in the
jungle I knew that his need was real and
I knew that the first donor who popped
up and said okay I’ll buy that phone
credit I knew they were okay because
they were one of my Facebook friends too
now the refugee and the person who
donated their phone credit didn’t know
each other but somehow stretched out
between the three of us was just enough
trust and just enough of a thread of a
connection for it to work amidst a
global crisis and what felt like the
other side of the world one person had
appeared on Facebook and asked for phone
credit and somebody else had said okay
I’ll buy that for you
it wasn’t just them either once a couple
of refugees in the groups all this
happen they thought they’d try their
luck as well so they popped up and said
could I have some phone credit they
wondered if there was anyone there who
could help them to and it turned out
there was now it’s pretty simple at this
stage because I knew the four or five
refugees in the group and I knew all of
the people who were donating phone
credit everybody knew each other but he
didn’t stay that way for very long good
news tends to travel quite fast and
pretty soon there was other refugees
from the Calais jungle
appearing in the group and asking us for
phone credit
but this is crazy though you couldn’t
just have a Facebook group where people
turned up at random said I’m a refugee
and I need phone credit and then someone
would buy it for them well for about a
week and a half you could but at this
point as we were adding more and more
people as we were trying to keep up with
the more and more refugees that were
coming into the group I was asking my
friends to add their friends and for
them to add their friends and so on so
that the donor pool would keep growing
and we could keep pace and another
volunteer joined a lady called Rianne
who helped me run it to begin with and
she said it might be more sensible
rather than just letting people turn up
and ask for credit to get them to apply
through us so we could make sure
everybody got the same amount and nobody
got credit more than once a month and
that would make sure that everybody had
a fair chance but there was watching
just one complication with this by
taking the position of processing all of
the applications we’d sort of taken on
the responsibility for assuring all the
people who were donating their money
that it was really going to refugees
that these are really genuine people and
we didn’t know we had no idea they were
just people turning up in the Facebook
group just asking for help and how can
you really tell over Facebook over
messenger if you’re speaking to someone
in the Calais jungle or if you’re
speaking to Dave and Stephen in Chu
fancies a free top-up well what about if
you ask them for some photos I’d
recognise a photo of the jungle if I saw
one it turns out refugees don’t really
like sending photos of themselves to
strangers over the internet no idea why
but apparently that’s not very a good
idea but what about if you ask them to
just hold up a picture of their hand
outside their tent outside where they’re
sleeping
maybe that would work I think some of
the more clever people in the room will
have worked out that this is the plan we
went with but not for long there were
more volunteers and it’s not the only
check we do on people we began
introducing other checks soon so we
heard we were checking people’s GPS
positions which you can easily do over
facebook Messenger we were checking
their asylum documentation and we were
checking their IMEI codes which is a
unique manufacturing code of every
mobile phone recording their SIM cards
and keeping it on a database and making
sure that none of the info
Meishan matched any of the other
applicants before we approve them for
credit soon more refugees began to
volunteer themselves for the group and
suddenly this meant we had translators
on our team and people with inside
knowledge about the camp pretty soon
we’d made up picture card instructions
so we could extract all the information
we needed from people who were asking us
for credit we could check that they were
genuine we could check that they hadn’t
had credit in the last 30 days and we
could assess just exactly how vulnerable
they were and how much of a priority
they would be there’s a good job we got
this stuff worked out because within
about a month within two months it
wasn’t just tens or hundreds that were
turning up in the group as you might
imagine good news travels quite fast
among people in desperate need pretty
soon it was thousands of people turning
up in the group asking us for phone
credit and it wasn’t just the Calais
jungle either it was people in Belgium
people in Italy Greece Turkey pretty
soon it was spreading across the world
our group had become a very busy round
about to break down on if you’re gonna
break down don’t do it on a side road
where no one can see you do it slap bang
in the middle lane for busy roundabouts
where there’s loads of traffic do on
Facebook if it’s not on Facebook then it
didn’t happen stories were beginning to
find their way back to us to some of the
people we’d given credit to it managed
to contact loved ones who they hadn’t
spoken to for sometimes a month two
months a year five years sometimes
everybody told us that they spoke to
their mum everybody was really thankful
for that and women told us that they
felt safer because they could call for
help when they needed to and children
had been rescued from danger by
summoning help from volunteers refugees
told us it made them feel human to have
phone credit again it gave them hope the
people we were helping weren’t just
anonymous figures on a newsreel they had
names they had stories and we were
hearing those stories in the group it
went on to become a community that we
all felt a part of I went back to Calais
one last time in the October just before
they demolished the main camp out there
we knew that people were going to be
dispersed all over possibly all over
Europe and that they would need phone
credit to keep them safe and to get
their things in order
and to take care of themselves we had
business cards made up in all the
different languages that were spoken in
the jungle and I went with these
business cards to hand them out just
like that first visit when I went there
I was immediately surrounded by a big
crowd of people all kind of begging in
different languages and tugging my arm
and asking me things but something had
changed the people who were tugging on
my arm weren’t asking me for shoes this
time and they weren’t asking me for
tents they’re asking me for selfies they
were holding up their hand and
pretending to take a photo of it and
laughing at me and grinning and smiling
when we gave refugees the chance to
connect to the outside world when we get
we didn’t just give them back services
and we didn’t just give them the chance
to organize some of their own aid and we
didn’t just connect them to their
families we connected them to ourselves
we’d formed a community which all of us
felt a part of and that community was
made up of people from the Calais jungle
from America from France from from
England from from all over and I think
we all learned that something we hadn’t
really felt that a lot of people say are
that restored my faith in humanity as if
faith in humanity is kind of lost but I
think people are instinctively very
decent I think people will help each
other as long as they can make some kind
of connection if they can see the good
they’re doing right in front of them
then they usually do it technology that
we have in the palm of our hands now
makes it possible to connect across
borders across cultures it makes it
completely possible and the need for a
more connected world I think makes it
essential today I want to make more
connections with all of you I believe
that a lot of the problems in the world
are born of disconnection I think some
of the things that are happening to
people far away if they were happening
to somebody we knew then we wouldn’t
allow them to happen I hope that all of
you or as many of you as possible will
come and be a part of our community and
help us to make it into something bigger
thank you [Applause]
and I don’t get out very much I spend a
huge amount of time on Facebook
I’d probably some of you spend lots of
time on Facebook as well but social
media is a weird place isn’t it people
tend to share lots of carefully angled
selfies of themselves or photos of their
dinner and it looks like they’re having
a really great life but it’s not always
an accurate representation of how things
really are
but I’ve actually got a different
experience of Facebook most the people I
speak to tend to just send me photos of
their hands like a selfie but with just
a hand instead of a face and I’m not
just talking about a few people either I
mean tens of thousands of people send me
photos of their hands over Facebook and
that’s not as weird as it sounds a
photos worth a thousand words right well
I think that depends on if you know what
you’re looking at about three years ago
the refugee crisis broke as a big news
story and my facebook was full of images
of what looked like crazy migrants
running across motorways trying to jump
on moving lorries with the police trying
to control the situation and it just
looked like chaos for everyone involved
but they’re the sort of questions that
give you despair the sort of photos that
give you more questions than answers
like who would run around on a motorway
in front of moving traffic why there’s
so many of them and why they doing it
right in front of the police where did
they come from and at the time David
Cameron described them as a swarm and I
think maybe people do look a bit like
insects if you’re far enough away and
it’s just arms and legs scrambling in a
mass but they weren’t really that far
away they were close enough that you
could if you wanted to go and find out a
bit more about them and refugees are
such a divisive issue people tend to be
very strongly against helping refugees
or very strongly in favor and I think at
the time I didn’t feel a strong sense of
compassion but what I felt was a sense
of curiosity
about the situation and in November 2015
two of my friends are organizing a trip
to the Calais jungle to volunteer to go
and do the usual things that volunteers
do out there distributing shoes and food
and clothes and the rest of it I was
prepared to go and sort through some
clothes in the warehouse if it meant
that I’d get to have a look at the
infamous jungle and I think that’s how
we all felt at the time it’s
kind of made it that way that we were
more curious than compassionate and I
was kind of more tourists than then I
was a volunteer and I think but on the
second date when I went to Calais the
chance came up to go into the jungle to
go into the camp to leave the warehouse
and this was my chance to go and meet
refugees close up like a sort of
long-haired Ross Kemp the problem was
that it was actually a really bad time
to go to the jungle people had been
arriving there in their thousands that
summer and there just wasn’t any
resources I mean we’re talking three
portaloos between two thousand people it
was it was stark and the other thing is
no one told us that when you go into the
Calais jungle you’re supposed to take
off your for the rest of the
yellowjacket that you’ve been wearing in
the warehouse and leave that behind and
so we wandered into the camp with these
fluorescent yellow jackets kind of like
a fluorescent lost sheep I guess and
within about a minute there was this
huge crowd around me of all these people
asking me things in languages so I
didn’t understand frantically tugging on
my arm and begging me for things begging
me for a ten begging me for a blanket
and quickly I realized it was a
different scene to the images that I’d
been seeing on the knees the people who
were asking me for shoes really didn’t
have any shoes they were walking around
barefoot in the mud in November and it
wasn’t just young men like I’d seen on
the news it was there was children there
there was women there there was an
elderly man who had only one leg who led
me to show me where he slept and it
turned out to just be a wet pile of
rubbish and if I’m honest my primary
worries before I’d gone to the jungle
was I thought it was going to be a
lawless place I thought if migrants were
prepared to run across motorways in
front of traffic then maybe they were
prepared to do anything that’s kind of
what it looked like on the knees but
stood there among them with this crowd
around me I sort of realized it wasn’t
me at risk it was it was then who at
risk I was kind of in shock at this
stage and I think when you’re in shock
you’re quite malleable you you kind of
just want the person next to you to take
you by the hand and tell you what to do
and the person next to me was a huge
Sudanese man asking me to put a tent up
for him in the wind
so I had a go at doing that the thing
about the jungle is if you’re ever stood
there wondering what to do you won’t be
stood there for very long because
somebody is going to be grabbing you and
saying please I need help with this and
you just have to do it I mean it’s an
emergency
and that’s what I hadn’t really realized
pines for going to the jungle I knew I
was going to a migrant camp and I knew I
was walking into a crisis of some sort
but I hadn’t really considered that I
was walking into an emergency situation
in the way that if you see an emergency
situation you have to respond to it
you’re kind of responsible you ever had
one of those situations in life where
you have some kind of emergency but
there’s just the right stranger there at
just the right moment just to help you
and to make it better for you
I’ve always driven really unreliable
cars and I remember a few years ago
driving to work and breaking down right
in the middle of a busy roundabout
slap-bang in the middle of the traffic
middle lane and my response to that
situation was just to get out of my car
and start pushing I just kind of wanted
it to be out of the way and within about
two seconds there was these two other
guys who had got out of their cars
they’d seen what was going on and they
were pushing as well and very quickly we
moved my car to the side of the road and
we kind of you know so I said thanks and
they went on their way and just before
they went on their way there was this
moment between us that was like a like a
kind of smug look that we shared like a
like a shared victory that we were all
kind of pleased that we’d managed to get
my rubbish old car to the side of the
road there are moments in life I think
when any of us would help a stranger
there’s certain times when it would be
more instinctive than it would feel like
an inconvenience if you were in a shop
and an elderly person in the queue in
front of you you saw them beginning to
stumble I think it would be instinctive
for you to reach your hand out and try
and steady them rather than just
watching them drop in front of you or if
you were eating dinner in a restaurant
and you saw somebody choking I think
you’d find it difficult to just carry on
eating without reacting in some way to
to what was going on in front of you if
you think of helping people on a scale a
scale of priority and at the top of that
there’s these immediate situations that
you feel compelled to respond to maybe a
loved ones in trouble and you just have
to drop everything and be
for them and then at the other end of
that scale there’s things which there’s
no way you’re going to help with no
chance there’s a friend who wants to
borrow money and they didn’t pay you
back the last three times or a cold call
from a charity that you’re not
particularly interested in and then
sometimes there’s things that are just
so big that it doesn’t seem like there’s
any point in trying to help maybe some
big news story far away and then I think
there’s some stuff that’s in the middle
somewhere if that is a scale then
there’ll be a middle for that scale
things which you’re not really quite
decided about things which you probably
would help with if somebody asked you
but you hadn’t really thought about
helping with them I thought I wonder
what it takes to move something up and
down that scale if something starts at
the bottom or if it starts in the middle
if it starts at the top how I can move
it from one place to another in a
professional setting when you talk about
calculating risk you tend to look at the
seriousness of something if it happened
and the likelihood of it happening and
if both of those factors are reasonably
high then you’ll take preventative
measures to make sure that it doesn’t
happen is why cars are fitted with seat
belts because road accidents really do
happen and the consequences of them are
quite severe but if you change those
factors around if you move one of them
away if you take a situation that’s very
serious but unlikely to happen like a
Godzilla scenario that would be quite a
serious situation probably a lot of
people would die in that situation but
it’s not very likely to happen and
that’s why we’re not all out practicing
big lizard drills just in case and then
you could do it the other way around you
could something that’s very likely to
happen but not particularly serious like
how careful are you about losing pens
maybe you have a nice pen you’re more
careful but we don’t take any serious
precautions against that happening
either and what if there were similar
sums taking place when it comes to
working out whether we help strangers or
whether we help anybody you might be
prepared to leave a good friend to
struggle through something that was
quite minor if you were quite busy at
the time well you might be prepared to
leave a complete stranger that struggles
through something really quite major
again if you were quite busy at the time
and helping just one person that’s
completely different to helping lots of
people or championing a call
the guys who stopped and helped me push
my car to the side of the roundabout
weren’t interested in the wider plight
of people who drive unreliable cars and
they weren’t politically motivated to
push my car to the side of the
roundabout and they hadn’t seen a news
report about it
they were just aren’t going through
they’re going about their day and they
saw a situation in front of them which
instinctively they felt that they needed
to respond to Mohammed the big sudanese
man
tugging my arm in the jungle had made it
to that same place in my list of
priorities we were both stood there next
to each other I’d gone all the way to
the jungle I was there and he was
tugging my arm asking for help putting a
tent up is not really my forte anyway
but putting a tent up in the wind is
even more difficult and putting a tent
up in the wind in the jungle is it’s
like three times more difficult because
the ground is so sandy you can’t use
tent pegs so you have to dig the edges
of the ten in to stop it blowing away
and everywhere you dig there’d be other
broken tents and rusty tin cans and
human excrement quite often and perhaps
I think because it was such a difficult
thing to do by the time you finally put
this tent up between the tourists you’ve
kind of bonded with the person that you
were working with and me and Mohammed
had that same kind of look that shared
victory in the same way that the guys
who’d pushed my car had there wasn’t
really about who had the broken-down car
or who was going to be sleeping in the
tent tonight it was just the fact that
together we’d managed to overcome this
obstacle it wasn’t just Mohammed either
the time I spent in the jungle was full
of those kinds of experiences moving
from one place to another quickly
helping somebody as best you could and
bonding with them a little bit at the
same time and I realized that refugees
weren’t really anything like I thought
they’d be whatever it was I thought
they’d be like sometimes when you see
someone that looks crazy wandering
around in the traffic they might just be
a normal person he’s having a bit of an
emergency and and you might need to help
them and I made quite a few trips to the
jungle after that as many as I could and
I made friends there and we we kept in
touch on Facebook that’s I guess lots of
people do refugees too and we did what
normal people do we we argued about
politics and we argued about religion
music and we shared jokes like for
example in England when we take the take
the mick out of someone for having a
huge old mobile phone we call that a
brick right well in Syria they call that
a shoe which I thought was quite good
I’d gone from being a passive observer
of something that seemed like a huge
crisis far away to feeling but I had
friends immediately caught up in this
refugee crisis itself had gone from
being something that was far away and
unimaginable to a series of close-up
one-to-one encounters with people and my
perception of what refugees I had really
changed
they weren’t dangerous or mysterious or
in any way different to us they were
just funny annoying kind irritating
sometimes they were just normal people
lots of them were very middle class and
it just made me think maybe this is what
the whole world’s like we’ve got all
these cultures nationalities religions
and we’re divided by borders but maybe
just if you go to any neighborhood in
the world you’d meet the same characters
maybe that personality types are just
peppered across them all at random and
all you’d have to do is just begin
mixing with people to find that out and
maybe that’s not such a big revelation
for anyone who’s been outside Norfolk a
bit more often than I had but
for me it was kind of a surprise I
couldn’t keep going back to Calais I had
a job and I didn’t have all that much
money to keep going to France and I
couldn’t keep getting the time off work
to do it
so I went when I could and I took what I
could to help people and when when I
couldn’t go I found out that I could top
up my friends phones online some of the
people in the Calais jungle we’re using
UK SIM cards in their phones the phone
credit is not something I’ve thought
about before but it’s hugely important
to people in a position of displacement
it’s gives them back their voice and it
gives them a little bit of control and
it gives them a chance at organizing
some of their own support networks and
it gives them a chance to speak to their
family most of all I think most
importantly it helps to keep them safe
at the start of February I had an idea I
chatted to lots of refugees online who’d
become my friends and I thought what if
I made a Facebook group
and I added all these refugees who I
talk to there wasn’t loads of them
there’s only maybe four or five at the
time and was really friendly with and I
asked my Facebook friends to join the
group as well and together peer to peer
people could just offer to top their
phones up just a simple idea just
person-to-person I kind of felt like if
people had the chance to my friends had
the chance to meet refugees
person-to-person in the way that I had
then it might shatter some of their
preconceptions about the differences
between us in the way that meeting
refugees persons a person that really
changed my perception people were pretty
skeptical why refugees why phone credit
how could you know you were helping a
real refugee over Facebook and refugees
were pretty skeptical too why would they
help me how can I trust them what if
it’s a trick but it only takes one
it only takes one stranger in the right
place at the right time to make that
difference now I knew the first refugee
he was asking for phone credit was
genuine because I knew him he was my
friend and I’d seen when he slept in the
jungle I knew that his need was real and
I knew that the first donor who popped
up and said okay I’ll buy that phone
credit I knew they were okay because
they were one of my Facebook friends too
now the refugee and the person who
donated their phone credit didn’t know
each other but somehow stretched out
between the three of us was just enough
trust and just enough of a thread of a
connection for it to work amidst a
global crisis and what felt like the
other side of the world one person had
appeared on Facebook and asked for phone
credit and somebody else had said okay
I’ll buy that for you
it wasn’t just them either once a couple
of refugees in the groups all this
happen they thought they’d try their
luck as well so they popped up and said
could I have some phone credit they
wondered if there was anyone there who
could help them to and it turned out
there was now it’s pretty simple at this
stage because I knew the four or five
refugees in the group and I knew all of
the people who were donating phone
credit everybody knew each other but he
didn’t stay that way for very long good
news tends to travel quite fast and
pretty soon there was other refugees
from the Calais jungle
appearing in the group and asking us for
phone credit
but this is crazy though you couldn’t
just have a Facebook group where people
turned up at random said I’m a refugee
and I need phone credit and then someone
would buy it for them well for about a
week and a half you could but at this
point as we were adding more and more
people as we were trying to keep up with
the more and more refugees that were
coming into the group I was asking my
friends to add their friends and for
them to add their friends and so on so
that the donor pool would keep growing
and we could keep pace and another
volunteer joined a lady called Rianne
who helped me run it to begin with and
she said it might be more sensible
rather than just letting people turn up
and ask for credit to get them to apply
through us so we could make sure
everybody got the same amount and nobody
got credit more than once a month and
that would make sure that everybody had
a fair chance but there was watching
just one complication with this by
taking the position of processing all of
the applications we’d sort of taken on
the responsibility for assuring all the
people who were donating their money
that it was really going to refugees
that these are really genuine people and
we didn’t know we had no idea they were
just people turning up in the Facebook
group just asking for help and how can
you really tell over Facebook over
messenger if you’re speaking to someone
in the Calais jungle or if you’re
speaking to Dave and Stephen in Chu
fancies a free top-up well what about if
you ask them for some photos I’d
recognise a photo of the jungle if I saw
one it turns out refugees don’t really
like sending photos of themselves to
strangers over the internet no idea why
but apparently that’s not very a good
idea but what about if you ask them to
just hold up a picture of their hand
outside their tent outside where they’re
sleeping
maybe that would work I think some of
the more clever people in the room will
have worked out that this is the plan we
went with but not for long there were
more volunteers and it’s not the only
check we do on people we began
introducing other checks soon so we
heard we were checking people’s GPS
positions which you can easily do over
facebook Messenger we were checking
their asylum documentation and we were
checking their IMEI codes which is a
unique manufacturing code of every
mobile phone recording their SIM cards
and keeping it on a database and making
sure that none of the info
Meishan matched any of the other
applicants before we approve them for
credit soon more refugees began to
volunteer themselves for the group and
suddenly this meant we had translators
on our team and people with inside
knowledge about the camp pretty soon
we’d made up picture card instructions
so we could extract all the information
we needed from people who were asking us
for credit we could check that they were
genuine we could check that they hadn’t
had credit in the last 30 days and we
could assess just exactly how vulnerable
they were and how much of a priority
they would be there’s a good job we got
this stuff worked out because within
about a month within two months it
wasn’t just tens or hundreds that were
turning up in the group as you might
imagine good news travels quite fast
among people in desperate need pretty
soon it was thousands of people turning
up in the group asking us for phone
credit and it wasn’t just the Calais
jungle either it was people in Belgium
people in Italy Greece Turkey pretty
soon it was spreading across the world
our group had become a very busy round
about to break down on if you’re gonna
break down don’t do it on a side road
where no one can see you do it slap bang
in the middle lane for busy roundabouts
where there’s loads of traffic do on
Facebook if it’s not on Facebook then it
didn’t happen stories were beginning to
find their way back to us to some of the
people we’d given credit to it managed
to contact loved ones who they hadn’t
spoken to for sometimes a month two
months a year five years sometimes
everybody told us that they spoke to
their mum everybody was really thankful
for that and women told us that they
felt safer because they could call for
help when they needed to and children
had been rescued from danger by
summoning help from volunteers refugees
told us it made them feel human to have
phone credit again it gave them hope the
people we were helping weren’t just
anonymous figures on a newsreel they had
names they had stories and we were
hearing those stories in the group it
went on to become a community that we
all felt a part of I went back to Calais
one last time in the October just before
they demolished the main camp out there
we knew that people were going to be
dispersed all over possibly all over
Europe and that they would need phone
credit to keep them safe and to get
their things in order
and to take care of themselves we had
business cards made up in all the
different languages that were spoken in
the jungle and I went with these
business cards to hand them out just
like that first visit when I went there
I was immediately surrounded by a big
crowd of people all kind of begging in
different languages and tugging my arm
and asking me things but something had
changed the people who were tugging on
my arm weren’t asking me for shoes this
time and they weren’t asking me for
tents they’re asking me for selfies they
were holding up their hand and
pretending to take a photo of it and
laughing at me and grinning and smiling
when we gave refugees the chance to
connect to the outside world when we get
we didn’t just give them back services
and we didn’t just give them the chance
to organize some of their own aid and we
didn’t just connect them to their
families we connected them to ourselves
we’d formed a community which all of us
felt a part of and that community was
made up of people from the Calais jungle
from America from France from from
England from from all over and I think
we all learned that something we hadn’t
really felt that a lot of people say are
that restored my faith in humanity as if
faith in humanity is kind of lost but I
think people are instinctively very
decent I think people will help each
other as long as they can make some kind
of connection if they can see the good
they’re doing right in front of them
then they usually do it technology that
we have in the palm of our hands now
makes it possible to connect across
borders across cultures it makes it
completely possible and the need for a
more connected world I think makes it
essential today I want to make more
connections with all of you I believe
that a lot of the problems in the world
are born of disconnection I think some
of the things that are happening to
people far away if they were happening
to somebody we knew then we wouldn’t
allow them to happen I hope that all of
you or as many of you as possible will
come and be a part of our community and
help us to make it into something bigger
thank you [Applause]
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