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The most important thing we learned this week is that when you fill a pallet to its height capacity it won’t fit through the door of our new warehouse, oops.

Refugee Start - the new layout

In between waving off the van to Calais we have been busily preparing your donations to ship them out to Lesbos. First we thought there wasn’t enough, then we laid it all out and stood back, there was no way it was going to pack down and fit on 7 pallets.

Refugees START The Huge Donation Pile

The packing began, we earnestly started to count the sleeping bags into the boxes, that didn’t last long. Three hours later we were still stuffing sleeping bags into the pallet boxes. 5 people, 12 hours, countless layers of sleeping bags, blankets, survival bags and as many socks as we could find and still not finished.

We made a few calls during the day to the Greek team for reassurance that they really can cope if we send all this to them. We were all just a little bit excited that the kindness of those who donated made this all possible.

Refugees START the boxes are all packed and on pallets

DHL humanitarian’s advice during the packing day made sure we got this right and at midnight we called it a day. A collection booked for the following lunchtime food and sleep became the priority, grateful this was in a warm safe bed.