Everyday work - Lesbos - RIC Camp

I have been back on Lesbos since 30 December 20. To ensure everyone's safety, I was quarantined here for another 3 days despite the negative PCR test. After these days, the Corona test was also negative here in Mytelini and the daily work began.

First of all, I went to the camp with our partner NGO #HomeForAll and had to realise, to my great regret, that still none of the responsible parties, be it the EU, one of the member states or Greece itself, could bring about an improvement for the protection seekers. So it seems that my initially planned first #disaster relief will become a bigger project after all. Many people now support our association "Flüchtlingshilfe-refugee assistance-doro blancke" and see that their support goes directly to the people in all our projects.

Thanks to #HomeForAll, which has had permanent permission to enter the camp for a few days now, we can enter the camp at any time to work for the people seeking protection.

A good team is needed to be able to help actively and efficiently. We already received a lorry full of donations from Austria in autumn. Helga Longin, who was on Lesbos with me for the first time in September and who thankfully took over the work in the warehouse, had to realise, like others, that it takes several people who work 40 hours a day for several weeks to get the loads in shape so that 20-30 families per day can be supplied to all family members.

Warehouse:

We have found this team. Susi, Luna and Konstantin from Vienna, 3 great young people. Before Christmas they started their work here and turned everything "upside down". When I returned, I didn't recognise the warehouse anymore. Everything was sorted, jackets, trousers, shirts, children, women, babies, all sorted in their own boxes according to size. What was not to be used was sorted out. Now the efficient distribution of used clothing could begin. In the last few days, Panayotis, who drives the van, and I pick up the prefabricated clothing packages from the warehouse every day and we take them to the camp, where our volunteers are already waiting. I thank the three of them from the bottom of my heart, without their help we would not be able to help the people so much.

Volunteers

We are really grateful and happy to have the support of so many good volunteers. Protection seekers who we already know from our work in the "jungles of Moria", who accompany us reliably and come to the agreed meeting point in the camp whenever we need them. Many thanks to them, because they are also an essential part of this big WE, without them our work would not be possible. With more than 1000 tents, each with 2 families, partly muddy paths, 7500 people, you have to build a structure if you want to provide real help. We are grateful that we have succeeded in this. We have rented 2 warehouses, thanks to you we have been able to support #HomeForAll with about 60,000 Euros and we have spent many hours and also some steps backwards thinking about how we can work most efficiently. Because all the things we have bought and ordered, such as thermoses, rain jackets, solar showers, masks, shoes, Pampers, baby milk, etc., which we give to the volunteers to "deliver", have to arrive at the right place.

An app for the needs of those seeking protection

Fayad Mulla, who will also support me here on site for the next few months, has already managed large Caritas shelters in Austria and also worked on a project in Iraq, has designed a solution. He developed an app especially for here. The distribution from the VAN repeatedly led to large gatherings of people that were not allowed. There was no overview, who already had, who needed exactly what. In such a difficult, incredibly sad situation, where people permanently lack basic needs, crowding and injustice during distributions from the VAN can hardly be avoided. From the very beginning, Fayad was keen to meet this challenge as best he could. He succeeded and I am very grateful to him for that. Every day, the volunteers in the camp ask a certain section in the camp about the needs. They go from tent to tent and enter the data of each family, number of persons, clothing and shoe sizes, newborns, status (important because of food bags, asylum seekers no longer receive any financial support except for one cooked meal a day) into this app. This information is then sent with the tent number directly to Susi, Luna and KOnstantin in the warehouse, where they immediately start packing. The next day I can already pick up everything for delivery.

In the coming days, "the change" will deliver 4 trucks directly to Lesvos, to Home for All. We will rent 2 more warehouses and 1 of them will only be used for food, which has already been arranged in Austria so that we can deliver a food bag for each family in the camp.

A lot here on Lesvos is organisation. Shopping every day, getting things like kettles, thermos flasks, pampers, which is a big challenge due to the quantities on an island and especially in the lockdown. We have been waiting several weeks for the 1200 solar showers we ordered. One must not have a romantic idea here. The personal work with shelter seekers at home is something completely different. It involves a lot of organisation, and personal contact with the people is limited to about 2 hours per day. But we use this time intensively to convey warmth to the people and our commitment to them and their situation.

Projects

After several hundred families and single travellers will receive their residence permits in the next few weeks and will then be forced into homelessness in Greece without basic provisions and completely on their own, we also see a human obligation here. Together with Home for All, we will think about this and there are already ideas that give cause for hope.

A word to the Austrian Federal Government

I find it deeply shameful that despite the pleas of so many personalities, communities, numerous representatives of civil society, it has failed purely because of the political will to take in 100 families from this slum, this deeply inhuman situation. An act that would show both greatness and a sense of human responsibility on the part of those responsible, and would also initiate something that is urgently needed, the evacuation of the graveyard of European dignity. This is not how we in Europe should house people, nor humiliate them.

In the evening we often go to bed very tired and my thoughts are with the shelter seekers who have to spend the cold night in unheated summer tents. Women, men and children.

Thank you for any support

Refugee Aid Doro Blancke, AT93 3842 0000 0002 7516

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