One And All Aid is a small charity based in Penzance, Cornwall, but one that punches above its weight. Its trustees, Shelley Meister and I set up the charity in 2018 after a few years spent collecting tents and outdoor kit for refugees in Greece, where Shelley spent a week sorting aid in the early days of the refugee crisis; and of making joint trips to Calais to volunteer in the kitchen and warehouse that fed and supplied people in “The Jungle.”
The charity now operates out of a shop in the Greenmarket, Penzance, which still serves as a base for collecting aid to be sent to northern France. But as Shelley says,
“When you ask people for tents and sleeping bags, they also give you paintings and china ornaments, which aren’t much help to someone living under a tree outside Dunkirk.”
So the shop raises cash by selling these items and uses it to fund two education projects in Sinjar, Iraq, which was the centre of the 2014 genocide committed by ISIS against the Yezidi people. These two projects give 300 Yezidi children each year a head start on their education, and employment for 21 people in Sinjar. Everyone who helps keep things running in Cornwall is an unpaid volunteer.
The genesis of the projects is a typically Cornish story. I was once a teacher and when I read that refugees and displaced people rarely have access to schools for their children, that struck home. So as the first chunks of money began to build up, the charity tried to find an organisation that could use the money to run schools in refugee camps. None was to be found. Then Shelley and I ran into a neighbour who was supporting Yezidis with medical and economic interventions. That’s the Cornish angle: as we say down west, “Everyone knows everyone else, and most of the buggers are related.”
This neighbour had two very competent local men on the ground in Iraq, and when asked if they could set up a school so families could move back into town from the tented camps they were living in, they said it would be no problem. And that’s exactly what they did.
The first school was surrounded by a perimeter wall, which meant the children could play out of doors without being blown up by the bombs and IEDs that littered the streets of Sinjar at that time. Demand for places was enormous, and the school operated at capacity from day one. Then a second school lost its funding, and One And All Aid stepped in to plug the gap.
Children attend both schools for a three-month intensive course in Arabic, English, Kurmanji, and maths. This equips them to thrive in the government-run schools, where otherwise they might struggle due to the trauma and discrimination their community has suffered and continues to suffer. To cite one example, Khairi is a young lad who dreaded going to a government school, afraid he’d be picked on or bored. After his first day at a One And All Aid school, he was regularly to be seen sitting on the kerb outside the front gate half an hour before opening time, “to make sure of not missing anything, and to get a good seat in class.” With that sort of enthusiasm about school, it’s easy to see Khairi doing well throughout his education – and his life.
Shelley and I are married, and we are 70 and 73 years old respectively. I’m working harder in retirement than I ever did when I was earning a salary, four days a week lugging stock around the place and helping customers find what they want.
But we both agree that it’s very fulfilling to leverage the generosity of the local community in a way that radically changes the lives of the Yezidi people. We pay tribute to our dedicated team of volunteers, who turn out week in and week out to help run the shop. We also pay tribute to the people who show up on the shop doorstep with wonderful donations: in the past few days these have included a Leach Pottery plate and a cashmere topcoat. Last but not least, we say thanks to our loyal customers, who turn cool inventory into cold cash, and do so with a smile.
If you want to help the charity with its work you can donate here.
