Being American in Calais is unusual enough that Joseph and Rachel Givens are regularly asked the same questions: Why are you here? Why did you move your family to serve in this way?
“Just being Americans in Calais is so unheard of,” they share. “We often get questions from the local community as well as people on the move. … It’s been a really good opportunity for us to share a little bit of why we wanted to come and how we wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We may not always answer in those exact words, but to communicate the sense of being a place of welcome … our spirit of welcome in a place that’s not our own.”
Joseph and Rachel, Mennonite Mission Network workers, served four years with the Maria Skobtsova House, a Catholic Worker-inspired hospitality community that offers temporary shelter, meals, and a family-like atmosphere to vulnerable refugees — primarily women and children from the Middle East and Africa — who are seeking safety en route to the United Kingdom. Rachel now works at Secours Catholique, a nonprofit accompanying women caught in the European refugee crisis. Joseph coordinates regional connections with European Mennonites and the Christ at the Borders Just Peace Pilgrimage.
Joseph speaks of a growing desire to engage more deeply with the local French community, known as Calaisiens.
“I think a lot of them just don’t understand or realize the thing what’s going on in their own front porch,” he says. “I want to connect with them on a friendship level and also maybe see what I can do to connect those two worlds in some way.”
One small but meaningful connection illustrates the potential. A local coffee shop owner, a friend of the family, called Joseph one day. A man from the migrant community had come into her shop with nowhere to stay and no idea where to turn. Joseph gave her the phone number for Utopia, an organization that responds to emergency situations for people on the move. She contacted them, and the man received help and orientation.
“That’s the kind of thing that I think is really meaningful,” Joseph explains, “because she is a local person who now has access to some of these resources that she wouldn’t have otherwise had if we didn’t have that relationship.”
As their French improves, the Givens hope to expand these bridges — through friendships with neighbors, parents at their children’s school, and everyday interactions that humanize both the migrant reality and the local community’s capacity to respond with hospitality.
In a city marked by fences, police presence, and the ongoing risks of Channel crossings, the Givens’ presence offers a different kind of mobilization: quiet, relational, rooted in the conviction that welcome itself is a form of peacemaking. Their work continues the legacy of Maria Skobtsova, whose original houses sheltered those fleeing persecution, and invites others to join in creating spaces where dignity and belonging can take root, even at the border.
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