Idea
Pallet Aid nurtures community humanitarian material aid collection groups though direct support and by organising and running shipments of aid to support people in need, with particular focus on people experiencing international displacement (refugees), statelessness, and/or homelessness or vulnerable housing. Pallet Aid’s range of direct support services to collection groups includes guides, training, export/customs services, operational and logistical coordination, storage, fiscal hosting, community-sector-friendly freight forwarding, volunteering events, workshops for young people and adults, and matching aid between collectors and distributors. To the groups we work with, and our many volunteers, we’re often simply known as “The Aid Hub”.
People
Pallet Aid is led by Elliot Harris, a long-time leader in the UK grassroots humanitarian aid movement and current chair of the Refugee Charity Network, the largest association of refugee community collection groups in the UK. Among other things, he’s been the chair/CEO of a Cambridge charity sending aid to refugees in Calais, Greece, and Lebanon; a Housing First high-need homelessness support worker; the manager of a social enterprise employing only people with current and recent experience of homelessness; and the event manager of a grassroots volunteer-run festival for 40,000 people. Elliot’s supported by an army of volunteers active in both the refugee and homelessness solidarity movements.
Impact
To make it easy, through guidance and logistical services, for people in the UK with no previous experience to form, grow and lead grassroots material aid collection groups that are ethical, professional, accountable, and fit for purpose to supply frontline distribution groups with the right stock to meet the actual material needs of the people experiencing displacement, homelessness, or poverty with maximum dignity. We want to nurture a resilient decentralised network of locally organised groups independent of government policy and funding, that supply material aid to frontline distribution partners to ensure that people have their most basic needs for food, clothing and shelter met regardless of their legal status or eligibility for statutory support.
Get in touch
Pallet Aid is looking for people who’ve set up, or want to set up, a material aid collection group. They’re also looking for help to fund, purchase and/or source a vehicle to transport aid from collection groups around the country to their international shipping hubs and UK aid distribution partners.
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