Herts For Refugees

15/10/2026

15/10/2026

On the road again today to deliver some much needed aid to our friends at La Capuche Mobilisée, Utopia 56 Calais & Grande-Synthe and Refugee Women's Centre. We still had a wee bit of festival salvage to clear and some sleeping bags very kindly donated by St James's Church Picadilly.

We will be heading over again 4th-6th November to deliver a few more tents etc and also to spend a couple of days volunteering with our very good friends at Refugee Community Kitchen. (Thanks for lunch today🧡🧡)
If you'd like to join us on this trip please get in touch/keep an eye here for more details.

We'll also be at St Albans Abbey (Patron saint of refugees, converts and victims of torture) on Saturday 24th Oct, please pop by and say hi if you're in the area.

11/10/2026

🎉 Celebrate Community and Compassion at the St Albans Community Showcase!

HfR are delighted to once again be taking art in this fantastic event!

Join us on Saturday, October 24th, from 11:00am to 3:00pm at St Albans Cathedral
for an inspiring event featuring over 60 charities and community organisations.
Learn about the impactful work being done locally, from social justice initiatives to
environmental conservation efforts.

This is a fantastic opportunity to get inspired, make meaningful connections, and
discover how you can support, volunteer, and donate to these worthy causes. No
tickets are required – just drop by and join us for a day of community spirit and
inspiration. We can’t wait to see you there!

For more information, please head to:
www.stalbanscathedral.org/communityshowcase

10/09/2026

Despite a wee hold up at Dover courtesy of Danny Tommo's Temu ninjas, we arrived at the port just as they blocked the entrance, we spent the weekend in France delivering all of the wonderful b***y that our outstanding crew of volunteers salvaged from festivals over the summer.
This is a brief post from Care4Calais with more to follow from us in due course.

A wee bit more.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DdCEmGUjbBB/?stkn=eW5ocmY0OWxoMTBn

Comment VOLUNTEER below and sign-up to help us sort this massive haul collected by this year's Festival Salvage.

731 tents. 1,369 sleeping bags. 34 tarps.

All left at UK music festivals this summer.

All collected by a group of volunteers.

Delivered by Herts For Refugees with support from Hope and Aid Direct.

And unloaded by hand by our team of volunteers with the support of partner organisations here in Calais.

With the constant cycle of site evictions across northern France, every item collected as part of festival salvage will provide shelter for a refugee living in appalling conditions over here.

Thank you to every person who volunteered to make this year's salvage happen. Your time will go a long way to making life a little easier for someone left without shelter this winter.

Next this massive load needs to be checked, sorted and then handed out to the refugees living outside in northern France.

You can sign-up to help by commenting VOLUNTEER below and we will DM you the link.

04/09/2026

And that's a wrap..!

Festival salvage season is over for another year and what a season it was.

From The Isle of Wight to Norfolk, Wales, Cornwall and more, we've scoured the country to collect the huge quantity of aid needed to supply our partners with enough stock to last through the cold winter ahead. It's been especially hard work this summer, our teams worked through the heatwaves to fill the trucks, getting back to camp in the dark and doing it all again the next day.

This mammoth effort means we will have three trucks of aid going out to our partners this weekend. A testament to the dedication and incredible work of our crew and especially, our fabulous volunteers. Without them, none of this would be possible so to everyone who gave up your time to salvage with us, thank you so much...🧡

Thanks also to Hope and Aid Direct for logistical support and trucks to take all of the aid to France, we're very grateful.

The trucks are due to arrive in France this Sunday, we'll be posting more about the delivery then.

20/08/2026

Another week, another festival cleared of lots of lovely tents and sleeping bags!

This week we were at Boomtown Fair, working with the fab team from sustainability to help save good gear from landfill. We were once again joined by our partners at Hope and Aid Direct who brought a 7.5t truck and our friends Capuche Mobilisée who came all the way from France with their van to help out.

Thankfully, the weather was a bit cooler than in recent weeks but the site was incredibly dry and dusty! It didn't stop our fantastic team of volunteers who got stuck in and filled the truck by end of play on Tuesday. It rained a little on Wednesday morning which helped keep the dust down but also meant everything still on the field was now a bit damp!

We made use of the festival's fencing as an impromptu drying rack and soon had a zillion sleeping bags steaming in the sunshine...☀️

We left exhausted and grubby but with full loads of good gear.

A massive thank you to all at Boomtown for helping make this possible, a special shout out to the catering team! 😋

We have one more big salvage event this season at Reading on the 31st of August/1st September. We really need your help if we're going to collect enough equipment to keep people sheltered and warm this winter. It's a great way to get some fresh air, save good equipment from landfill and know you're keeping displaced people alive in the coldest months.

Please sign up now via the link below, the cut-off date is Monday 24th August so don't miss out, get on the list, even if you're not sure if you can make it.

Thanks so much...🙏

11/08/2026

HfR are known for our big festival salvage events but there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes. We'll always go the extra mile to collect aid so, on Monday we were salvaging in Norfolk and today we were collecting aid in Derbyshire. That's over 500 "extra miles" covered and it's only Tuesday..!

A massive thanks to our friends at Circular Camping for inviting us to collaborate and for all the hard work the teams at both locations put in to make it happen.

If you'd like to join in and help us collect more vital aid, details of our next volunteering events are below.

Boomtown festival, near Wi******er, 18th & 19th August.
Sign-up form here: https://forms.gle/QQ2a7RJnTP7QYSby9

Reading festival, 31st August & 1st September.
Sign-up form here: https://forms.gle/8NwYkutc19Fdc68s9

These are the final events of the year and our last chance to fill the trucks with life-saving aid that will protect refugees this winter.

Come and help us repurpose waste into warmth..!

07/08/2026

Truck Festival - completed it!

The wonderful volunteers who helped out at Truck Festival have already had their salvage delivered to our warehouse in Calais.

With an estimated 250,000 tents left behind at UK music festivals each year, there’s plenty more tents to collect.

Volunteer for festival salvage by commenting SALVAGE, BOOMTOWN or READING below and we will DM you the form to sign up to help out at the following festivals.

📍 Boomtown - Tuesday 18th August
📍 Reading Festival - Monday 31st August
📍 Leeds Festival - Monday 31st August
📍 Creamfields Monday 31st August

03/07/2026

We've just about recovered from another epic weekend with our friends Herts For Refugees at the first Festival Salvage of the season Isle of Wight Festival 💚
This year was a real scorcher but the hard work of the Green Team in getting the environmental message across meant the salvage was smooth and easy and very little went to waste!

Why do we do this? Great question, we'd love to tell you...

We're a charity rooted in sustainability and we believe in giving a second life to things that other people might no longer want. But the gear we collect at salvage doesn't head to our shops, it goes straight to the front lines of the refugee crisis, thanks to the hard work of Herts for Refugees and their partners working in places like Calais & Dunkirk.

When you read those sensationalised headlines about refugees, do you ever think about the real people whose lives are being scrutinised? At Emmaus Hertfordshire, we are driven by a shared belief in solidarity with those in need.
Did you know...
🤝Displaced people fleeing conflict face the scorching sun, freezing nights & brutal conditions in Northern France & beyond.
🤝Regular police raids mean the only shelter these people have, along with everything they own, is regularly confiscated or destroyed.
🤝Because they lose everything in an instant, they rely on a constant pipeline of emergency shelter just to stay warm & dry, or out of the sun.

Festival salvage isn't just about a fun weekend away (though we do fit that in!!) its about saving tonnes of waste out of landfill, but crucially, its about delivering life-saving aid to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
Our companions know all too well what a lonely and hostile place the world can feel when you don't have a safe place to call home. People in need are people in need, whether they are here on our doorstep or across the channel. Our work with Herts for Refugees proves that no matter our circumstance, when we join together, we can achieve something wonderful, and impact someone else's life.

06/04/2026

It's been a busy few weeks for HfR recently and last week was no exception.

We were back in Calais to deliver 150 tents to our friends at who will distribute them to displaced people in the region.

Winter may be coming to an end but it's still bitterly cold in northern France and on average, the authorities evict the camps (destroying tents and everything in them) every two days. Many people are unaware that British tax payers fund a large part of this brutal treatment, which is factor in pushing people into the hands of smugglers and across the channel in small boats.

We'll be back with another delivery soon but the increased cost of fuel is having an impact on our activities. Please donate if you can, thank you.