Author: All4Aid

2020 In Retrospect

As the year draws to a close, we are reminded of and led to reflect on everything we  experienced in 2020 at All4Aid. 

One of the most exciting moments: Seeing the successful implementation of our Resident Volunteer Programme, through which 20 women and girls could serve alongside us at our centre to support their own community in Moria Camp. 

One of the saddest moments: The passing of our dear friend Herbert Keller, one of our long-term team members and former coordinator of the Living Timber Project.

One of the most tense moments: The breakout of violence on Lesvos, which eventually led to our entire team being temporarily evacuated from the island in March.

One of the most frightening moments: Waking up to the news that Moria Camp had been burnt down overnight and not knowing what had happened to our friends and people we knew inside.

One of the happiest moments: Being reunited with our Resident Volunteers after the fires in Moria, knowing that they were safe.

As we look back at 2020, we want to thank you very much for journeying with us through each of these moments and events through your ongoing encouragement, prayers and support!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our team at All4Aid. We hope that today, and over the course of this holiday season, you are able to find joy and happiness despite the challenging year we have all faced collectively. Thank you for your ongoing support and we look forward to what this next year will bring us at All4Aid.

Human Rights Day

On this Human Rights Day, we are reminded of the fundamental rights which every human being is entitled to, regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Our mission at All4Aid is to work with displaced people to enhance their quality of life by facilitating humanitarian assistance, cultivating social inclusion and fostering educational development. The values that guide our actions and the way we work are based on the principles of the Christian Faith as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: compassion, equality, partnership, excellence, integrity and humility.
Let’s remember today and every day to stand up for human rights and that we are all more connected in our humanity than we are different.

 

IBC Missions Offering

We are pleased to announce that All4Aid has been selected as one of the recipients of the International Baptist Convention’s Global Missions offering this year. We were one of three organisations selected and will receive 40% of the donations.
IBC is a fellowship of 66 churches in 24 countries across the world. Each year they hold a Global Missions offering aimed at supporting various organisations they are partnered with.
We are so grateful to the IBC for selecting us and recognizing the importance and value of working with displaced people. Collection should start in all IBC churches this coming Sunday. Visit the IBC’s Facebook and Instagram pages for more information and updates.

Greece in Lockdown

Today, Greece enters a new nationwide lockdown for the second time to contain the resurgence of COVID-19. For the next three weeks, all citizen’s movement is restricted and all non-essential businesses will be closed. 

The lockdown has a big impact on our operations. No one  will be allowed to leave the perimeter of the camp, the bus company we use as a shuttle to and from our centre will not be allowed to work, and our team will not be allowed to distribute shower and laundry tickets inside camp.

Therefore, our centre will be closed for the next three weeks and our team will be taking a well deserved break. We hope that these three weeks will be enough to contain the spread of COVID-19, so that we can re-open our centre as soon as possible and continue to offer the vital services which are so needed.

 

Dare to Dream

It’s been a couple of weeks since we started our new initiative of distributing shower tickets in camp and shuttling women and children to our centre. Among the many who came to our centre this week, was a young woman. She came up to one of our short term team members, started playing with her hair, and began to talk about her interests and dreams. The young woman expressed her ambition to study Art. Our team member shares: “When she spoke she was really proud of herself. I felt in her voice the passion and the hope and the love to really live her life.” She shared about her desire to be in Athens one day and how being in Europe makes her feel that she really has the opportunity to pursue her dreams.

Her family arrived on Lesvos only a few months ago from Afghanistan via Turkey, like so many of the families we meet here. While they were speaking, the young woman was also able to teach our team member some words in Farsi. Our team member emphasised how important it is for her to learn some basic phrases in their language. She says, “We can show our love and our energy and that we want to help just by smiling, but it’s really special to be able to say something to them in their language.”

We love having these moments with the women and children who come through our doors on a daily basis. It encourages us all to have these conversations and to see the happiness and hope that so many people exhibit, despite the immense difficulties they have had to endure.

New Shuttle Services

We mentioned in a previous update that we leased a space closer to the new camp for a future All4Aid centre. We continue to carefully evaluate a phased approach into this new space, considering both the construction time needed for this to become a functioning space, and the uncertainties surrounding the new camp as the long-term site for housing displaced people on Lesvos.
However, since the need for showers is still great right now, this week we hired a shuttle bus to transport women and children from the new camp to our centre near Moria. A few members of our team have been going into the new camp every morning to hand out shower and laundry tickets and to facilitate boarding the bus.
We are doing our best to continue to offer humanitarian aid in an environment that is always changing. Following this new plan we are now able to offer 135 showers and 50 loads of laundry each day. The shuttle bus costs us 3.500 EUR per month. This is an added expense to our monthly budget that we felt was absolutely worth the investment.
Although there is much more to be done, we are thankful that hundreds of women and children were able to shower this week. They were mostly single women or from female headed households. It was a joy and privilege to be able to see so many return to our centre and take a warm shower in a dignified manner.

2020 Volunteers

At All4Aid, we really value the support we get from short term teams that come to assist us with the running of our various projects on Lesvos. We are fortunate that so many people from all over the world have come to serve with us over the past years. In 2019 we had 108 short-term volunteers providing a total of 3.836 hours of work.

In January 2020 there were over 200 short-term volunteers who had applied to serve with us here on Lesvos, but most have had to cancel their trips due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

We want to thank those who planned to serve with us this year but have had to change their plans. This year has come with many unexpected turns for everyone, ourselves included. But we are thankful for those who had planned to come and give of their time to be here and support our work. We hope to have you join us soon!

Transfers to the Mainland

With almost all of the former residents of Moria now moved into the new camp, there has been an increase of transfers from Lesvos to the mainland of Greece and other EU countries in an effort to decongest the island. Because of these transfers, we have had to say goodbye to some of our community volunteers that we have worked with at our centre. This is a very normal reality of our work but it is always hard to say goodbye to those with whom we have become friends with while they are here.

Last week, we said goodbye to one of our resident volunteers who had lived inside Moria. She worked with us as a seamstress and often came to the centre with her two small children. Her family has been transferred to Athens where they will continue the process of claiming asylum in Europe. Most of our team wasn’t actually able to say goodbye in person because it happened so quickly, but she was able to contact one of our long-term volunteers after she had arrived in Athens.

During their conversation she thanked us for helping her and said that she forgot her problems in Moria when she was working at our centre.

This is a huge part of what we do. Yes we have facilities that provide women and children with important basic needs like hygiene and laundry, but we also want to be a space that does more than that. We are a space where women and children can be safe, where they can learn and where they can build community, no matter how much time they are with us for.

2 Weeks Post Fire

When our team started work this week, they weren’t sure exactly what it would look like now that so much has changed in the aftermath of the fire.

Almost all of the former residents of Moria have been relocated and moved into the new camp. The new camp is 3.5 km (60 min walk) from our centre and even with the distance there are women and children coming each day. Some made the journey just for a shower while others brought strollers full of clothes to be washed. Yesterday, one girl came in for her first shower since the fire inside Moria. This was more than 2 weeks ago and she had been unable to shower since.

Women and children are making this long journey to our centre because there are no other facilities like ours inside or near the new camp. But this journey will become more difficult as the weather becomes worse and there are less hours of daylight. Our centre on the doorstep of Moria is no longer the best location to serve them. With this in mind, we have secured the lease of another facility just a few minutes walk from the new camp.

We are now in the process of planning a phased approach in transitioning into this space from our current Centre. While we work through the next steps of what programs or projects we can run out of this new building, we are thankful to have the current centre to continue to best serve those who need it most.