Helping Where You Can

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Helping Where You Can

It is impressive what can happen when people get together and decide to do something. Have you followed the posts made on the LSR Facebook Group? Have you seen the photos? A…


Crutches for Syria

A number of very dedicated volunteers in the Languedoc have accomplished an enormous amount of work in the last few months. They have been steadfastly collecting medical supplies, medical equipment and medications for shipment to Syria.

Wheel chairs and more

Donations have come from local hospitals, pharmacies and other sources: Wheel chairs, crutches, examination chairs, medications and medical supplies were, and continue to be, desperately needed in Syria where clinics and hospitals have been bombed and equipment has been destroyed.

Different associations have come together for a common cause. For example, many medical supplies were given by a retired surgeon working with an association specialising in bringing sick children from Madagascar to France for surgery; while a young man called Raphael (Raf Istol) of the association Al Ados (which normally sends medical equipment to Morocco) answered a poster appeal in SuperU, Lodève and hooked us up with countless wheelchairs. A chain of people with vans were needed to collect them from their storage location in Castres!

Meanwhile, the technicians at the Bédarieux hospital provided several beds.

Volunteers have spent hours and days sorting, packing, labeling and eventually transporting the donations.

Boxes and boxes


The English relief organization OneNation supplies containers to various groups in the UK and France. They organise the logistics and the distribution of the donations once they arrive in Syria. So far LSR volunteers have collected donations of various kinds for the four containers leaving from Escanecrabe near Toulouse.

One Nation partners with RAS-SINE in Haute Garonne. An empty container arrives at Nikki and Gary McArthur’s place in Escancrabe where it is filled with donations gathered by volunteers from around the region. Volunteer drivers like Joel Bamber and Chris Thornton have taken it in turns to drive rented trucks the long journey to deliver the donated items to the shipment’s departure point.


Joel ready to make delivery of medical supplies

Here’s Joel ready to go to Escanecrabe to make delivery.

Into the container

Loading it all in the container . . . in the rain.

Stuffing in every last box...

Stuffing in every last box!

The container travels by sea from Marseilles and arrives first in Turkey. From there the medical and food supplies are taken over the border to Idlib in Syria. The Fourth container with its treasure of life-giving supplies is now on its way.

Many thanks go to all the LSR volunteers who have made it possible to make a real difference: Rachel and Chris Thornton, Joel Bamber, Naurika Cahill, Bassie Scott and the many others who regularly participate in this effort.

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Note: Thanks go to Rachel Thornton for helping with the writing of this post, and to Naurika Cahill for translating it into French.


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