Lesbos-March 21

On Friday we flew back to Lesvos after a little more than 4 weeks break. 

The last weeks before we went home in February we worked intensively and were able to distribute a lot directly in the camp. 

Thanks to our trustful relationship with Katarina and Nikos, founders of Home ForAll, a small but very efficient NGO on Lesvos, we were able to rent a warehouse directly in Mytelini, which served as a temporary storage for the great donations in kind from Austria. 

We were able to distribute a food package of 15 kg to each family (noodles, rice, oil, sugar, salt, tomato paste, lentils, chickpeas, onion, potato, milk), we were able to distribute several baby packages (nappies, dummies, baby powder, baby cream, clothes, thermos flask if the mother has no milk, powdered milk). 

All newborns received a warm baby skin thanks to the collection campaign by Courage-Leben retten and Diakonie Österreich. 

We were also able to send many other things such as cooking pots, shoes, blankets, healing creams, cough syrups, skin ointments, etc. to the people on the run. 

We can only do all this because we are also volunteers at Home for All. They cook about 1200 meals a day for different, particularly vulnerable groups. In the camp itself, diabetics, very pregnant women, old and sick people get their food, cooked with love, 2 warm, fresh portions every day. 

The necessary infrastructure is needed for this. 

For years, Katarina and Nikos have been taking care of big and small problems of people on the run. Their kitchen is the heart of the NGO. 

They cooked in huge pots that the staff had to lift from the cooker with great effort, onions and potatoes had to be peeled by hand for hours and much more, which was extremely hard on the body. 

Thanks to the generous support of civil society, we were able to help Home for All purchase a lot of new equipment and cabinets. 

Katarina, with her great experience, planned everything, thought it through carefully. It was restructured, more efficient equipment was purchased, the space was reorganised. 

Now everything is installed and the new equipment is already in use. The joy is great for all of us. 

This innovation allows Home for All to cook twice as many meals in the same time. 

We are very happy that this project, which benefits those affected in Camp Moria2 and also many refugees on the island, has been so wonderfully successful. 

We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for your trust in what we do and for your support. 

We have been in quarantine for 1 week since the day before yesterday. Despite a negative Corona test, this is a regulation of the Greek government. 

Here Fayad and I structure the new plans for the coming weeks. 

We are again expecting several aid deliveries for children, for families, also things for those travelling alone. 

And we pick up the thread again to other NGOs that we have had the pleasure of getting to know in recent months. 

Like Medical Volunteers International, Zaporek, One Happy Family. 

We will again deliver food parcels to families who live outside the camp and receive little to no support from the Greek government. 

If you are interested in what we are doing here in the next few months, how we are working, what our goals are, who we are working with, then take a look at our page every now and then. 

It is important for us to emphasise again and again that the top priority is #evacuation. Neither here, nor elsewhere, must we as NGOs remain silent when people on the run, people seeking protection, are deprived of their rights. 

The accommodation here, as well as on other Greek islands, lacks any human rights and serves a policy of deterrence at the expense of the people fleeing and of all our dignity. 

We must not accept this under any circumstances, because it is and remains a crime. 

Hardly anyone who has seen this catastrophe, this injustice for themselves, can imagine the real pain, the injustice inflicted on the people fleeing here. There must be a solution as soon as possible. 

#Lesbos #Moria2 #EvavuateNow #Human Rights #Greece #Austria

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