Our founding story

Refugease was born of immediate and direct response to a photo, of which this picture is an illustration (by Yante Ismail), hitting global headlines overnight.
On 2nd September, 2015, a three-year-old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi changed our lives forever. Alan tragically drowned in the Mediterranean sea as his family were trying to reach Europe.

Upon seeing the photo of Alan Kurdi hit her social media feeds, Refugease Founder, Valentina, set up a simple Facebook event at a local music venue in an urgent attempt to gather aid to be sent to Europe. The event went viral, attracting thousands of willing individuals to donate items on the ‘needs’ list.

After a colossal outpouring of generosity from the public, we collected four double-decker buses of aid over a period of two days; we were very lucky indeed to have been donated a warehouse.

Refugease, the charitable organisation, was born.

Since this day, we have not stopped collaborating, researching, collecting, fundraising, crying, laughing, responding, and adapting. We focus mainly on helping refugees in transit. We do this by providing frontline evacuations, where conflicts are at their most precarious, and distributing emergency survival aid for refugees on the move. We also work on self-reliance projects, providing formal education for refugee children in Jordan, up-skill adult refugees into employment in the UK and internationally, and build hydroponic farming systems.

Alan Kurdi did not die in vain; the graphic reporting of his untimely death created an instant and long-term tidal wave of action and compassion; a global movement took place.

Above all, we learned that inaction will not protect us; inaction only supports the oppressor.