With our small forces we strive to highlight refugee problems, to provide supplies and opportunities

Stand By Me Lesvos

In this very long background article about the situation in Lesvos also Mixalis Avialotis, Director of Stand by Me is quoted, as well as members of our partners Moria Corona Awareness Team and Moria White Helmets.

“We have been working with refugees for years, helping on the one hand to learn Greek and other languages to artistic activities, sewing and first aid courses, on the other hand their professional rehabilitation. We also provide essentials. The second-chance school was attended by many adults, near the old camp of Moria, and we had recommended in tents and paradings inter-teaching school. We do not present ourselves as experts or saviors, we do not have a timetable for stay, we lived in Lesvos before the problem and we will live onwards. With our small forces we strive to highlight their problems, to provide supplies and opportunities. We cooperate with the University of the Aegean and the Erasmus network. We support every project of self-organization of the refugees themselves, in fact three such groups have been set up: Moria White Helmets, who takes care of cleanliness and electrical engineering in collaboration with the administration, Moria Corona Awareness Team, which informs about the pandemic, provides sanitary material and promotes rewarding recycling, having arrived to collect 15,000 plastic bottles a day at the camp, and Moria Academia, which also functions as an inter-teaching school. The local population is now, we would say, “τριχασμένος”, some still support the refugees out of real interest or even out of interest, they do not want to “disappear” them, while the other 1/3 moves according to the current. For us, however, there can be no solution that does not include the refugees themselves. They are not useless, nor incompetent, many have knowledge and skills, i.e. they could be used in many areas inside and outside camp: from agricultural and technical work to infrastructure and configuration projects that can be carried out much more directly and economically than various contractor companies. Securing employment and having prospects is the best antidote to marginalisation, institutionalism and inaction, which give rise to a number of problems. But these presuppose political will and a culture of mutual trust…” (Google Translate)

Check out the full article: http://www.lifo.gr/…/gree…/312107/xeimonas-sto-kara-tepe