Forum: Mobile Refugee Support (MRS)
On Tuesday, October 28th, 2025, QPID’s forums team put together an informational session on Refugee aid in Northern France with a grassroots NGO called Mobile Refugee Support (MRS). Charlie Whitbread is the founder and director of the NGO, and gave us an opportunity to learn about what MRS provides to refugees and any person seeking asylum. MRS is currently based in Calais, from where they attempt to target locations that have been neglected by governments and larger charities.
Charlie began the forum by expressing the variety of services MRS provides, which include access to essentials and equipment to help travellers enable more bearable living conditions. They have communication support to help those with daily services, such as access to power and WiFi for up to 500 people at a time. This is incredibly useful for people to get in contact with family members, charge any devices they may have and provide some stability in knowing they have access to services. The MRS team also offers personalized food packs, phone repairs and the provision of relevant up-to-date information for those who have been stranded without a home or safety. Since the NGO was established back in 2017, they have developed many of their procedures and services to fit the needs of the individual's support.
Students were able to gain a better understanding of what people have to go through when fleeing a displaced country, one going through either conflict, persecution, human rights violations or disaster. These are subjects that lead people to internal displacement or forced migration. Charlie provided a run-through of how individuals are treated during the fleeing process, the issues one may face, such as losing people, belongings or food during travel, getting lost, being taken hostage by either militia or mafia, being taken advantage of when seeking aid, and trouble with governments, the list could go on. He also emphasized that the journey does not end once people reach the safe spot in Northern France. Many are left sleeping in rough, informal camps, under constant risk of eviction, police harassment, and extreme weather, all while navigating complex asylum procedures. In this context, MRS’s model of mobile aid becomes important as their teams move between sites, respond quickly to changing needs, and coordinate with other grassroots groups to ensure that as many people as possible are reached.
Charlie further explained MRS’s philosophy of working with communities rather than simply delivering aid to refugees and asylum seekers. The team and volunteers spend time curating relationships, listening to what people actually need and showing up consistently so that trust can be formed. MRS tries to keep a more relational, solidarity-based approach grounded in compassion, understanding and long-term commitment. This allows them not only to provide material support but also to offer a sense of dignity and respect to people who are often dehumanized in public discourse.
For students, hearing directly from Charlie made the realities of displacement far more tangible than reading statistics from a textbook. This forum highlights how protracted and precarious life can be for refugees stuck in limbo and how gaps left by states and big agencies are filled by small, adaptive agencies like MRS.
QPIDs forums team also highlighted the realities that asylum seekers face through an interactive activity designed to make students directly engaged & to. better understand the circumstances of displaced people. The objective of this activity was to immerse students in a simulated refugee journey so they could better understand the emotional, physical and bureaucratic challenges people face when fleeing their homes in search for safety. By moving through stations that mirrored real barriers, such as language obstacles, documentation issues, scarce resources, and dangerous routes, the activity aimed to build empathy, so students could contextualize Charlie's discussion of MRS and highlight the resilience and vulnerability of displaced people.