I'm copying Sarah's write-up here. She writes very well, and I second her last paragraph.
Mom,
I wanted to give you a brief over view of our trip to Greece this week. Over the past five days we have met with five different groups and on more than eight different projects. It has been incredibly beneficial for us to obtain knowledge, build relationships, gain a better understanding of the humanitarian sector and ensure continued development through follow up assessments.
We started with a visit to Lisa Campbell of Do Your Part at the Oinyfyta camp outside Athens. I didn't take any pictures but Amy posted a picture of the camp on Instagram. I was referred to Lisa by Leann Heder. Lisa is a formidable, LDS, army wife who came over to Greece two years ago and after spending time doing immediate emergency relief, was set up in a camp outside Athens. There she works with a few other organizations. Right now her camp has about 400 Afghanis.
Because Afghans are no longer available for resettlement in other European countries and are rarely available for family reunification (when they are resettled in Germany or Sweden or another country with a family member who has reached and been granted asylum in that country), they have no other option but to request asylum to stay in Greece. I would guess this is the case with the majority of refugees who are in Greece today.
Do Your Part was founded after Hurricane Katrina and works with disaster relief. Lisa was paid by a sponsor but is now doing everything she does for free, working 18 hour days to put out fires and just keep her camp running. She helped several Afghani men form a business within the camp Oiynyfita Wares. They design, sew and sell bags and coin purses made from their former UNHCR tents. They now make enough money to cover their own costs and salaries. As Lisa's camp is slotted to close in December, she is hoping to move the business into town, establish a community center to help integrate the refugees and find housing for the families of those involved in the business and other camp members who choose to remain in Greece.
We have learned Greece has almost no infrastructure for integration and is incapable of providing any language or any other services. As the majority of large aid organizations begin to leave Greece, as the camps close and they perceive the initial need as met, this leaves a large gap that can hopefully be filled by smaller groups and local communities. Greece is struggling economically with large rates of unemployment and now a significant influx of an unsustainable population. I kept thinking this week of "the obstacle is the way". Maybe this crisis of migrants and refugees will provide Greece with the jump start and economic boost to life itself out of the recession.
Tuesday morning we flew to Thessaloniki and drove to Katarini to meet with Alexandra. Alexandra is a local Greek who is part of the Greek Evangelical Church. After the borders to Europe closed tens of thousands of refugees were stranded in camps around the area. The elders of the church found families living outside the camps in such horrible conditions that they put three families in their car and drove them to their homes. From this a new aid organization was founded, separate from the church, but by members of the church. Alexandra has formed a housing project that provides 100% housing, language classes, medical aid for the first two years and then 25% less each year until they become sustainable.
She has picked 8 refugee families and two greek families to be eligible for her program and found apartments for them throughout the town. She arranged for them to meet us at a wonderful luncheon. The families each cooked something for us and it was wonderful for us to see the community she had formed for them. The families come from Iran, Palestine, syria and Greece. Three of them have already found jobs and are hoping to soon be able toe support themselves. She has created a wonderful network. I was especially interested because she is Greek and has involved other Greeks in the project--including two part time employees who work tirelessly to help these families. She hopes to duplicate this program, on the same small scale, in another area closer to Athens There is so much need in and around Athens.
As we have talked to local Greeks about the refugees, we have seen some be angry or upset that these people are coming to their country when they are already suffering so much but one pointed out that he has chosen to see it has an opportunity instead. The pastor of the church met with us and thanked us for what we are doing. He told us the Greek are already suffering but that it is important for us to remember that compared to these people, we live like kings and queens. He says remember we are all children of God and it is our responsibility to help one another.
After Alexandra we met with Elias who has created an incredible space. Elias is German-Greek who has chosen to stay in Greece and raise his family. He has built a community space with a food bank (to obtain the food who must work sorting distributions for a specific amount of hours a month), a doctors office (necessary when refugees were not able to go to the local hospital), a library, and an incredibly organized social pharmacy (filled by local donations) he has made his data base available on the internet and has an agreement with bus drivers to transport the medicine to pharmacies throughout the area who request in, medication is expensive and often difficult to obtain, here he has collected unused and donated medicine that he can provide for free. He has even built a Christmas market that he plans to hold for free (bring a bag of food or a medicine to donate) for the community. It is so very German looking.
We met with Hailey from LHI to talk about her programs in Greece, Jordan, Utah and Arizona but were unable to reach her camp in Ceros. She showed us pictures of her large tent with new wood floors where she teaches English, German (her camp is Yazidi and duo to their marginalized history is being granted resettlement in Germany) and provides yoga and mental health care.
The next day we met with Greece Communitere and ARC. We provided them a large grant to build a water sanitation system in a camp. When they tried to coordinate with local groups to find a camp, the camps begin to close or were outfitted with necessary sanitation systems by UNHCR. Instead the grant was given to Greece Communitere to outfit a mobile resource center, a van and trailer which would drive around to camps and housing developments and provide them with the necessary tools and resources to repair pipes, make camp improvements, and build furniture . We met them outside a housing development of women and children from Syria awaiting family reunification with their husbands in Germany. I attached a photo of a clothing rack made by a woman.
They also showed us a space that has been provided by the city as a collaborative space for young creatives. They plan to set up a DIY makers space there and help integrate the refugees into the community through programs and activities run out of this space. As there becomes less of a need for camp development, they intend to transfer their energy into cultural integration. Their founder is from San Francisco and has run sustainable programs in Haiti and Nepal that provide community resource centers that give value and increased positive human experience to their areas.
While their ideas for cultural integration via shared creative collaborate space, they seem to us to be heavy on ideas and light on implementation. We plan to watch their progress over then next few months and see if they show us anything really amazing. They have recently hired a Greek Project manager. We have told them we would like to see more Greeks and refugees on their staff and less internationals. We consistently feel that Greeks have the capacity to successfully run these programs--providing jobs and lending sustainability to the project.
From Thessaloniki we flew back to Athens. This morning we visited the Melissa Network. It is a space created in Athens for immigrant/refugee women and children. It's a beautiful space where women can come and have breakfast and lunch. They hold classes for English, German, art and gender based violence. While we were there a former member, who now works as a translator for Doctors without Borders, was giving them a seminar on specifics to do to obtain asylum. They also have on site childcare in a lovely creche and are renovating a large kitchen to be able to provide cooking classes. They told us that when they moved into the neighborhood the neighbors were decidedly against them. Many were strongly Golden Dawn members who saw immigration and refugees as a threat. After a few months, they instead saw that as they patronized their business and cleaned up their building, they were instead improving their neighborhood. For a few months the Melissa Network was forced to leave the space due to some an unclear procedural contract with a sponsoring NGO who wanted the space as a meeting space. The neighbors who had been so set against them being there, complained so much, the NGO turned it back over to the Melissa Network and they happily moved back in.
Our last meeting was with Georgia. A retired, Greek teacher who has been running her own English language program on the island of Samos. She says the island is again full of refugees as they are keeping all who come into Greece in camps on the islands until they can verify they are eligible for asylum. There are still over 1,000 arriving on boats every week. She is incredibly dedicated and a bit formidable. She explained to us that as much as she hates Athens, she wants to move there for 6 months of the year to teach to a more stable population. She would also like to expand her program for unemployed greeks, police officers and offer Greek as well to the refugees who will be unable to be resettled. As we were talking she mentioned that she was born in Zimbabwe, where Todd Corbett is hoping to expand his agricultural program. When we mentioned it to her she was very excited and said, "Anything, anything you can do for Zimbabwe would make a incredible difference. They need so very much." She asked us to connect us with Todd and said she hope she could provide him with the connections to be able maneuver the difficult, complex reality that is trying to work within Zimbabwe.
Later some of her students came to reserve their certificates. They spoke fluent English. Conversing with them was so easy and really quite nice after some of the painful conversations we have had via google translate on a smartphone. When we asked how long they studied with her, they told us only 45 days. It was unbelievable but a testament to the kind of teacher she is. They all told us she was a really good teacher, but really hard and really strict. One of the boys is 19 and just received a very coveted full ride scholarship to university in Athens. He told us how he wants to become a pilot. I showed him a picture of President Uchdorf and told him his story, how he was a refugee but worked and studied and became a pilot. Though the boy seemed excited about this story and asked, "Was he really a refugee?" One other former student who was much older (his papers say he 21 but he let slip that he is closer to 50), had also applied for the scholarship but had not received it dejectedly mentioned President Uchdorf had time. But he said, "I have no time. It is too late for me to study. What about me?." Which remedied me of the incredible gift that time is and how often I take it for granted, squandering this valuable asset.
As we were leaving Georgia was telling her students who had come to visit that they need to be applying for jobs every day. She said, "Don't be like the Greeks. I am Greek but I am not like them. They are too comfortable, too willing to not move forward. You can be the change for our country. You can get a job, any job, even if it's not the job you want. Get it, show them you can do it well and you will change people's minds and lift yourself up."
Then we walked around a bought a lot of olive oil and ate home made donuts drenched in fresh honey and cinnamon.
I really want to thank you (and dad) for the experience. It is proving invaluable to me. I really enjoy the opportunity to spend time focusing on how I can help those in need. I have been inspired by the dedication of others and uplifted by good humans seem to be innately driven to do. I have also been motivated by the exhaustible amount of need there is in the world and valuable resource of time.
