Great stuff, @ChristinSa ! I love the “R2R” concept. With @Alex_Levene we had already appreciated the self-organising skillls demonstrated by refugees in the case of The Jungle in Calais (I highly recommend you read his beautiful posts: one and two).
The Jungle behaves the way it does because it is not an official camp. It’s more like a favela: the first stop in a migrant’s social journey, which mostly goes upwards in the social ladder. So, refugees are more free to cooperate, R2R, then they would be in an official camp. Their ingenuity and skills come into play: they make their own lives better, and become empowered at the same time. Your own story, it seems, goes much in the same direction.
@Alberto thank you for your comment and for pointing out these 2 great articles by @Alex_Levene! I enjoyed reading them from the first until the last word and felt very touched as they brought up images of informal camps in Greece (e.g. Idomeni in the north borders, the islands and other places) where similar situations and an amazing solidarity movement arose to provide care for the people there.
In all these places, it was very encouraging to see what can be achieved when determination of refugees and solidarity from activists/volunteers is combined in a self-organised and impulsive way. In the informal PIKPA camp in Lesvos for example, refugees create beautiful, colourful bags from discarded, life-jacket materials and are also planning to distribute them abroad.
There is many hopeful examples of such great initiatives in Greece and other countries and I am sure they will multiply as refugees are settling for a longer-time period in their new living places.
What seems to be important right now, in order to make all this effort more meaningful and useful, is to move further from just providing for the basic needs to create structures of solidarity and cooperation that can provide more sustainable solutions and allow people to take care of themselves and feel empowered. This is a big challenge that lies ahead but we should start thinking this way if we want to make a real change to both their lives and ours.
Timely roles for Network connectors, documenters, researchers
Great story, Christine! I find it so useful to see people like you, Alex, @Aravella_Salonikidou who are not just contributing on the ground, but also take the time to write the story and build this layer of connectivity that is needed for multiplication as you mention… or remodeling of cooperation. It seems you’re on a promising path. I will try to support this in any way I can. And if you know someone who is interested to set up shop online to work out distribution of eg. handmade objects abroad - this team in Berlin led by @ninabreznik and @serapath are offering free coding courses for refugees.
Thank you for the encouragement! I’m working on my article these days, so I’m a little bit (more) buzy! I’m glad to know about R2R. I didn’t know about this project. I’ll be in touch!
“In the informal PIKPA camp in Lesvos for example, refugees create beautiful, colourful bags from discarded, life-jacket materials and are also planning to distribute them abroad.”
Do you have more information about this story, @ChristinSa ? It sounds amazing!
I am glad you find this project interesting @Alberto , I was also very excited to hear about it when I visited this Lesvos camp. Not only because it encourages refugees to learn new skills or use existing ones, but also because of the great idea of reuse of plastic materials and environmental awareness related to the project. I wrote an article about it which was published here, although it is in Greek there is quite a few photos from the camp and the handmade bags, if you wish to have a look. You can also find more info about this self-organised Lesvos camp on the following link, with contact details, in case you would like to contact them about this specific project.
Thanx for sharing @ChristinSa! It could be nice to meet you! We run “next door’s” project and we don’t know each other. Now I think we have this chance. I’d like to know more details and how I can help.
This is great @Aravella_Salonikidou! I have heard about your project and have ‘seen’ you virtually here and there on facebook, mainly through Room 39 and Steki Metanaston groups/pages, as I can understand that you are also helping the people there. I am also involved with some of the groups at Steki so we could perhaps meet there sometime, or at Micropolis, another social space nearby where this R2R call center project is based. I would love to see how we could possibly collaborate and help each other and I am sure that there is a lot to share/learn from the work that we and other people in our networks, are doing. I will connect with you on facebook to stay in touch!
It’s lovely to see you “next door neighbours” connect in the context of a global community! Let’s stay in touch, though, there are many people in the Edgeryders community, all over Europe, trying to help out, healing our ailing societies. @Alex_Levene is an obvious example, but there are others. The potential for mutual learning is obvious.
Me, @ChristinSa@To_Steki@Positive-Voice and maybe some others, we (or our projects) are in the same neighbourhood. So, when @Ybe and @Alex Levene visit Thessaloniki, we can arrange a creative meeting! Thanx to this community!
I am planning on coming to Thessalonki in the middle of January. (15th-19th) Part of the trip will be touch volunteers and get to know what is being done there by Help Refugees (who i worked with in Calais this year). I’d also love to meet up with you and see your projects. If anyone has any suggestions for cheap places to stay whilst we’re out there please let me know.
@Noemi and everyone else you are more than welcome to also join! Would be great to meet in person and exchange information and ideas! I am sure @Jenny_Gkiougki would love that as well
@Alex_Levene this is great! I and people from our collective will be happy to meet with you and discuss about our projects and your experience in Calais. I will also try to see if I can find some cheap options to suggest for your stay. Looking forward to meeting you in Thessaloniki!
Many thanks for the kind words @ChristinSa, i’m really glad that my words touched you.
It’s interesting also that it made you think of camps at places like Idomeni. The team who manage the warehouse in Calais and do a lot of the groundwork on the Jungle camp is led by the British charity organisation HelpRefugees. They also did a lot of work in Idomeni during the last year as well.
I believe they have now moved their operations in Greece to Thessaloniki, so perhaps you have come across them and their team members? I saw that they recently opened a new distribution warehouse there.
I have been talking to their team and i’m trying to find a time in early January when i can come out to Greece and talk to them/see what they are doing there. I hope that during this time i might also be able to meet some of the great people and organisations that have shared their stories on Edgeryders (@To-Steki, @Aravella Salonikidou, @Pavlos)
Good to hear about HelpRefugees and to have you here in Greece
@Alex_Levene good to learn about the work of HelpRefugees, I have not come across them so far but will look for more information and will try to contact their team in Greece to see what they are doing. I am very much in favour of refugee self-organisation or projects involving the solidarity movement and refugees in horizontal relationships (althoug I am aware that this is not always easy to achieve) but I can see and understand that some of the more formal orgs are also being organised in a way that allows quite a lof of self-organisation or self-management in practice and are doing a lot of great work on the ground. I have seen this already with some organisations working in the camps around Greece.
It will be great also to have you here in Greece! Please let me know when this happens and I will arrange to meet you with our group in order to share our experiences and other valuable information.
