Thank you - Syria Appeal

As you may know, during October we were collecting vital items for the refugee crisis on behalf of Syria Relief who have been working in the region for the last four years.

All our cafes were collection centres and we had a overwhelming response, with the teams inundated with donations. Along with the most in need items such as toiletries, bedding, camping gear and medicines, we were extremely touched to see hand made clothes, cuddly toys and Christmas gifts for children.

Donated items were picked up from the cafes by our fruit and vegetable supplier, A.David & Co Ltd, and taken to their central warehouse in Bristol to be stored in giant crates.

We were intending to take the donations to the headquarters of Syria Relief in Manchester in a couple of A.David vans but we had such a tremendous response to our appeal that we had to switch to using one of their articulated lorries to transport them to the charity for distribution to international refugee camps.

We are enormously grateful for the fantastic support from our customers, who it is clear have been as deeply affected as us by the plight of refugees fleeing horrific scenes in Syria.

We’re so pleased to have been able to do something practical to help those in need, and we can’t thank everyone enough for bringing in items to our cafes over the last month, and our suppliers like A.David for helping us to manage this appeal.

One of the highest costs incurred by the charity is to cover the transport of items to areas in need, so we have also donated £3,500 to pay for the cost of sending the donated items to the refugee flash points.

A.David helped by collecting items from the cafes before storing them at its warehouse after Managing Director Jon Evans (pictured with Sam) offered his company’s support. All the donated items were transported to Syria Relief HQ on Thursday, November 5th by Sam, myself and a few of the BTP team. The charity will then deliver them to refugee ‘flash points’ in Europe, where large numbers of refugees are arriving but there is little infrastructure to take care of them.

Thank you for all your support.