Update: Moria after the Fire - Stand by Me Lesvos

Stand By Me Lesvos

Update: Moria after the Fire

Dear Friends and Supporters,

as you can imagine we are going through very difficult times. Lesvos is in chaos after Moria camp burnt down and almost 12.000 refugees are squatting on streets, parking lots and olive groves.

Everyone is working non stop to manage, the island now is under emergency rule and the Government in Athens send officials to co-ordinate efforts. But all this will take time.

So we are asked what we do. We were busy all the time first to stay in contact with all our partners from MCAT, MWH and Moria Acadamia. Together with their families they are about 500 we take care first. They ll need tents, blankets, clothes, food, water and whatever. We started to supply them, empty our warehouses (thank you Humand Aid Collective) and try to purchase whatever is available on the island. We are still setting up the organisation of this and as you can imagine face a lot of difficulties.

The Moria Media Team is reporting non stop and they needed power banks and other stuff. That already went to them too and we can keep up the reports about what is happening. Pictures from all places reach us hourly.

In the meanwhile we have set up a Logistics committe that is coordinating with various organisations in Germany we work together a chain of supply. The needs are sent from here and we try to get one container per week ready. Already 3000 sleeping bags, 50.000 masks, blankets, hygienic articles are collected and today the first container is leaving. We are embedded in the local coordination with other actors to coordinate who is collecting what. We believe it is very important to do this according to the needs here.

MCAT is starting with Corona awareness on Monday after all members have shelter. Corona is still spreading and most of the refugees who were tested positive disappeared in the crowd. We are all very afraid Corona continue to spread in this chaos and we want to focus on our main filed of work. Thanks to the support of medico international new posters will be printed and the team will start distributing masks and try to take care what one can do in this situation.

Moria White Helmets will again start collecting rubbish in the place and cooperate with municipality to try to keep the places as clean as possible.

Both are trying to find way how the teams can help with distribution, helping especially vulnerable children adn women and help them wherever they can. They still believe the most efficient way to deal with this huge crisis is to organize refugee self-help and we support them in that. We are glad the co-operation between all of us was functioning even while the camp was on fire and we were able to help rescuing the ones in danger. We stood togehther all night and knew all the time about the whereabouts of the team members.

Additionally we hope to set up the mask factory soon we are already thinking how small calsses and activit ies for children could be done.

We are in the middle of all that, we know what is going on in all places, we work here since 2017 and built levels of trust both into the refugee community and with other local actors. We will continue to do that.

We think this is more important than huge sums of money, but because we do need your support. As always we will use it in the best way for dozens of different activities but we cannot predict in detail what is needed. The situation is total fluid. So for anyone who likes to support us, we just ask you to trust us and especially our partners. We did archieve a lot since March and we will not at all stop now but continue.

But whatever we do now is just a drop on a hot stone. Let us try to make as many drops as possible.

But this is only possible with your support: support us