Hundreds of exiles are waiting to cross to England from Calais (illustration).

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M.Libert / 20 Minutes

  • The migrant hostel hijacked the Amazon platform to help the exiles.

  • In the product comments have been inserted testimonies of migrants who have passed through the Calais camps.

  • The idea is to educate Amazon users to encourage them to donate to the association.

Pick up the donations from Amazon.

This Monday, the Auberge des migrants kicked off a major campaign to appeal for donations in favor of exiles on the coast of Nord-Pas-de-Calais.

Instead of more traditional means, such as the now common jackpots, the association has used, or rather diverted, the services of the e-commerce giant Amazon.

This winter, the associations that come to the aid of migrants are facing a significant drop in donations while they estimate the number of exiles on the coast at a thousand.

At the migrant hostel, volunteers sometimes had to ration the items distributed because they did not have enough for everyone.

An emergency situation which pushed the association to rack its brains to "trigger donations".

This idea of ​​using Amazon came to the volunteers of the Auberge des migrants, starting from a simple observation linked to the health crisis of the coronavirus.

Divert comments to explain the situation of migrants

Indeed, with the confinements, the French have withdrawn massively to online sales platforms, to such an extent that companies like Amazon have literally exploded all their attendance records.

"To reach these French people, we have hijacked the commentary functionality under certain products to expose the living conditions of migrants", explains Sarah, a volunteer at the Auberge des migrants, stressing that Amazon was not aware of the 'surgery.

These are basic necessities, vital for the exiles to survive in the conditions we know: tents, sleeping bags, hygiene products, food, etc.

And his coup, the Auberge des migrants has been preparing since the beginning of January.

Thus, under the ad for a 20 kg bag of Thai long rice, we can read the comment left on January 6 by Fawad: "Feeds well when you can only have one meal a day in Calais".

By clicking on his profile, we discover the story of Fawad, this nurse now based in Paris but who for a time lived in the “jungle” of Calais.

Commenting on an ad offering a pack of 12 toothbrushes, Mohamad explains: "This toothbrush brings back good memories to me because tooth brushing was almost the best time of my day in the camps for exiled people."

There are dozens of them like that.

“Some comments jumped out without us knowing why, but most of them were validated by Amazon,” says Sarah.

L'Auberge des migrants à, still on Amazon, has created a wish list.

"Everyone can therefore buy in two clicks the products needed by people in exile and send them directly to the association," says the Auberge des migrants, adding that it is also possible to give without going through the e-commerce giant. .

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