Responding to the refugee crisis

Help Refugees

Borkowski took on the dual role of maximising the impact of grassroots charity Help Refugees’ ambitious £1million fundraising campaign and ensuring that the true story of the Calais ‘Jungle’ and other camps around Europe and the Middle East reached the news – including channels hostile to refugees.

Story

We employed our music, culture and showbiz black books created a major media profile around such fundraising and awareness building events as Katherine Hamnett’s now-iconic Choose Love fashion range, Sophie Dahl and Jamie Cullum’s storytelling and musical workshops at the Calais Jungle, comedy series Stand Up for Refugees, gig series Bands 4 Refugees, A Night with Jamie Cullum at the Jazz Café, Rave for Refugees and Refugenes – in which major figures from the arts and media world revealed their own refugee backstories. We gained widespread media attention which reached both fundraisers and audiences who may not have been aware of the crisis.

Throughout this campaign we also seeded news stories in the British, French and international media about the latest situation in the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp, successfully positioning Help Refugees as a truth-telling authority and key source of news about the crisis.

Impact Highlights

"Accidental activists: the British women on the front line of the refugee crisis"

"Refugee campaigners launch legal challenge over Home Office 'failure' to implement Dubs scheme"

"How it feels to ... be the child of a refugee"

Bands 4
Refugees
NME Front Cover
and partnership
with
NME Awards
Help Refugees
used as a
key news source
for journalists
covering the
refugee crisis
270+
pieces of national and international news coverage
120+ items of
national arts,
culture & showbiz
coverage on
Choose Love
fundraising events
£1 million
raised in
Choose Love
2016-17
fundraising drive

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