Meet Kyra and David!

They have 8 years of professional consulting experience in the US. But, instead of working from their offices in Colorado, they’ve spent the past 5 months providing pro bono service to volunteer and civil society teams helping refugees.

Below, they share their experience volunteering with grassroots organizations in Greece and Serbia.

There are many grassroots teams, from informal volunteer groups to small local NGOs, who have long been on the ground striving to improve the lives of refugees stranded throughout Europe. It’s incredibly important and fulfilling work to meet the basic needs of those who cannot do so for themselves. There is also a solid pool of volunteers ready to do that work.

But, as these teams go from emergency initiative to a more permanent organisation, there is a new essential question emerging: how do you create structures & processes that respect the flexible and informal nature of grassroots teams but make operations smoother without stopping your work?

This is where someone with experience can come in, give a new perspective and use their skills to create the tools or processes that can make a team work more effectively.

Working in the background to support grassroots team’s growth may not come with the same emotional stimulus as working directly with refugees, but in the end, I believe it can have a broader impact. And there are still plenty of warm fuzzies to be had when a team coordinator (who has given every waking hour bringing dignity back to those who have lost it) is profusely thanking you for saving their sanity via a basic process flow.

What is it actually like

In our 5 months working with CAMPFIRE Innovation, we facilitated strategic workshops, advised teams on long term planning, guided process improvement discussions, evaluated teams’ communications strategy, and built several financial and volunteer planning tools. All in an effort to support these teams in their transition into a sustainable grassroots organization.

There are some extremely interesting challenges wrapped up in this pro-bono, capacity building type of volunteering.

• Many teams still desire to operate in a flat structure involving the entire team in all decisions.
• Many teams have a rotating string of volunteers with new people starting and leaving each week.
• Other teams are caught in a cycle of setting up one new project after another without fully optimizing what they already have in process.

Openness, flexibility, humility and simplicity are the keys to making a difference in this dynamic environment.

New challenges of grassroots teams

Basic needs must still be met, refugees still need new shoes, winter coats and daily meals. But as the “refugee crisis” transforms into a long term problem, the teams supporting it must transform as well.

• The necessary change: Teams that once started as small groups of volunteers banding together to fill a gap quickly became committed grassroots teams. Those teams now need to shift with the situation again and transform into sustainable organizations.
• Why it’s challenging: Most of the team leaders have been operating in a world where their daily activity consists of putting out one fire after the next. This transformation will include strategic planning, process improvement, and diversified fundraising etc.. All of which require these leaders to shift their approach from filling gaps to proactive planning.
• Openness to support: Grassroot team leaders and project managers are ready and willing to do this new work. Many just need a little guidance or simply someone who has the time to help work on these long term and administrative topics.

There is currently a high demand for volunteers who can support teams in their efforts to transform into sustainable organizations.

David and I (Kyra) were lucky enough to have more than 10 incredible teams invite us into their operations. Even with 8 years of professional consulting experience, we both learned so much about ourselves as professionals and problem solvers, moreover we learned invaluable lessons about human compassion, dedication, resilience, passion and dignity from the amazing teams that welcomed us into their world.

CAMPFIRE Innovation also benefited from Kyra and David’s pro bono volunteer service, and is beyond thankful for their dedication to grassroots organizations providing services to refugees across Europe.

If you’re interested in sharing your expertise and volunteering with the grassroots community in Greece check out CAMPFIRE Innovation’s Pro Bono Experts Program and apply today!

The Pro Bono Experts program is open to all professionals interested in volunteering their services to grassroots organizations providing refugee aid. Projects last for 2 + weeks and CAMPFIRE Innovation provides on the ground support to all volunteers.

The application process is free.

Volunteers cover accommodation/food/travel costs. CAMPFIRE Innovation can provide recommendations for accommodation and travel advice upon arrival in Greece.

Email experts@campfireinnovation.org to share your CV/ resume or reach out with any questions.

Last week, Campfire Innovation welcomed an Effect.org expedition.

What is that? A group of people working in large companies like Google, Salesforce & Autodesk, dedicating a week to travel to Greece, learn more about refugee response and work with selected small organisations to overcome challenges in fundraising, recruiting and use of technology. They visit camps, spend time with volunteers and refugees and give their expertise to help us all do more.

In the short time we spent all together, the real value came from the willingness of this group to be open-minded and understand and fully commit their very impressive skills and expertise to the refugee cause.

Nobody asked them to come all the way here, nobody told them to give up their time, families, comforts, their bubbles and echo chambers. But they came.

Here is what we learned from our time with them.

We have to keep talking about refugees & migration

Most of the participants had some volunteering experience back home, a lot of them with refugees. But, even in this group that had chosen to come to Greece specifically for this issue, few knew of the nuances and challenges refugees and volunteer organisations face every day: the growing arrivals, the confusion around asylum procedures, the slow pace of relocation, the trauma, the burn outs…

These things are practically never covered. It is our job as an organisation and our duty as a community of humanitarians, activities, volunteers, refugees, donors…to keep talking, keep raising awareness, keep drawing attention to a situation which, 2 years on, is still happening.

It’s time to redefine the word “crisis”

A lot of people come expecting to see the images media have thrown at them: the boats, the large queues at the borders, the crying babies…It’s September 2017. More than 2 years since the huge spike in arrivals. The pace is slower, the emergency is finished.

What they will find is something different, but just as heartbreaking: thousands of people waiting, struggling to build a life, stuck in limbo. And we saw first hand how affected everyone from the Effect expedition got.

It’s the realisation that this is not a “crisis” any more but it is still a challenge, for refugees, for locals, for the hundreds of aid workers and volunteers on the ground every day.

It’s the realisations that this is so much bigger.

With a predicted 250 million people displaced by 2050…the migration crisis will continue to be part of our lives. Maybe not in Greece, maybe not in Italy, but somewhere. Populations will move.

Maybe it will be conflict or climate change or oppressive regimes. Whatever causes migration, we cannot keep dealing with it with quick fixes or bandaids…We need real solutions that guarantee dignity, safety and fairness. We need policies, tools and systems that will be effective and will not break down under large numbers.

And we need to start building them today.

We need to reflect & plan

For Campfire Innovation, the most important contribution from the two groups from Effect.org working with us was their curiosity, their questions, their willingness to go deep into understanding the refugee situation, our work but also what we are fighting to achieve in the future.

Any grassroots organisation, independent team or volunteer group suffers from having to constantly be on the go. If we get a new idea for a great solution, we start implementing at the same time as everything else because things don’t stop.

It’s like learning to row a boat while building the boat, you are in a hurricane and the sea is lava.

That means there is hardly time to think about your activities, to assess what works and what doesn’t, to plan ahead, fundraise ahead…But we have to! More than ever we need to think of the winter ahead, the plan for supporting thousands of children as they go to school, to find ways of collaborating to share resources now that large NGOs are scaling back…

Campfire Innovation is often the sounding board for other teams. We make a point to help the helpers, look at how teams operate and brainstorm with them.

But somewhere along the line, we sometimes forget to do it for ourselves. Having Effect with us was an amazing opportunity to stop and think, be happy for what we do well and ruthless about where we struggle.

We are very thankful for the strategy plan that came out of this work and it’s already being a huge help as we put in practice the first few steps.

There are people willing to help

The most impressive thing about the whole expedition is how willing people are to help. They see the value in the work of smaller organisations and understand how much their contribution, the things that seem so easy for them to do, can make a huge difference for us.

In the space of 2 days, our whole database was reorganised and turned into an easily usable series of forms. This in turn is affecting how we collect information and how we start using it, searching for patterns, identifying new connections we can make.

Beyond just that, it was so heartwarming to find so many people willing to continue helping beyond this week, thinking about already coming back, suggesting connections and ideas for the future, not just for Campfire Innovation but for many other teams too.

Seeing migration first hand, meeting refugees, understanding the contribution of civil society response, it’s a huge wake up call. It’s the same “aha” moment that brought so many of us to where we are today.

And it is encouraging and inspiring to see others become engaged it, people who could choose to ignore this problem (because they can) jumping right in.

On behalf of Campfire Innovation, to the Effect group: thank you for not sitting idle. Thank you for your help.

To the grassroots teams, volunteers, independent initiatives…your work matters and people care. They are out there, trying to make sense of what the news are telling them. If we work together, we can create the solutions that will provide refugees with dignity and humanity in the worse moments.

Some of you reading this may have decided to make short trip to Europe to help those working within the refugee crisis this summer. But before you set up a crowdfunding page, book time off work and pack your bags for Greece, we want to offer a useful guide to supporting the humanitarian response.

1. Look at the alternative ways for you to help

Be an asset from home: It is a 21st Century crisis in every sense. With grassroots groups just as in need of communications experts, researchers, fundraisers and coordinators as any other organisation might be, be creative about how you can help! Are you taking a break from a job in the creative industries? Media? Law? Business? You all have skills that could be utilised effectively from your home, and would be hugely appreciated.

Meet the most pressing needs for grassroots groups: If you only have ten days to spend in Greece, the funding for your trip could be more useful in the form of donations. Even seemingly small donations make a big difference to grassroots teams, and you can also fundraise for your chosen team remotely — this is a role that is in high demand.

2. Help is needed, but resources are strained (or, why sometimes you don’t receive a reply to your emails)

Grassroots groups are now experiencing a “revolving door” effect: a regular turnover of 2–3 week short term volunteers that come in, help and then, just as we are getting used to them and start relying on their skills, need to leave again.

Projects that previously accepted all the help they could get are now becoming stricter and extending their required minimum time commitment to slow this revolving door. Even with flexible systems in place, constant changes in the volunteer list are a strain on Greece’s grassroots groups with limited time to recruit and train.

3. Create your own volunteer role: multitask!

If you are still sure that you would be able to do the most help here in person, there is a huge, diverse and increasingly interconnected network of grassroots support groups in Greece.

Make yourself available to multiple groups, rather than appealing to one particular project to induct you as a temporary team member.

Look for the more low profile jobs: warehouse organising, aid deliveries, shelf-building. There is a team for every job.

4. Understand Europe’s crisis, and the roles within it, have evolved

In Greece, volunteers have been integral to the creation and survival of sustainable refugee support projects. While the funding funnelled into “the most expensive humanitarian response in history” dribbles away through mismanagement at the higher level, volunteers have been hard at work in Greece’s island hotspots, anarchist-run urban squat schools and cooperative centres.

But the humanitarian response to the refugee crisis has evolved from its earlier days. Although the surge in new arrivals to the islands mean there is still a need for initial emergency provisions (food, clothing, blanket distribution), Greece’s displaced communities now also need accommodation, legal advice, non-formal education, counselling, meaningful integration and support. What is needed is planning ahead, building relationships with displaced communities, improving our teams’ quality of work.

It is now your duty as a volunteer to assess your skills and utilise them effectively for the greatest possible impact. Be smart!

Campfire Innovation is an organisation accelerating efficient and dignified refugee aid by grassroots teams. It works to connect Europe’s grassroots community by coordinating projects with like-minded teams, relevant resources and skilled volunteers.

www.campfireinnovation.org

www.facebook.com/campfireinnovation

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A guide to being a short-term volunteer in Greece this summer was originally published in AthensLive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It is a quiet Friday morning and the streets of the Kaminia district, at the heart of Piraeus, are almost as peaceful as on a Sunday afternoon. In between its light-colored flats, some of the older buildings, once used as factories by tobacco workers and shipbuilders, reveal the district’s industrial past and make passers-by reminiscent of a time they never even lived.

As I walk down Amorgou Street, silence slowly makes room for scattered noises coming from the football field around the corner, where around 20 players are warming up before their training session. To a casual observer it would appear no different to the hundreds of similar sessions which take place on weeknights at amateur sides across Greece — but this is no ordinary club.

Set up last September by the NGO Organization Earth, the Hope Refugees Football Club is exclusively made up of refugees and asylum seekers between 18 and 26 years old. “We had already set up football teams at the Skaramagas and Sounio camps, but we soon realized that we needed to offer the same opportunity to refugees living outside of the camps”, says Katerina Salta, Executive Director at Organization Earth, during a Skype interview.

“So we decided to approach not only refugees staying in camps near Athens (Skaramaga, Elliniko, Shisto and Eleona) but also those living in occupied spaces and common flats”, she adds. Partly financed by the UEFA foundation, the aim of the program is to better integrate refugees living in Athens and provide them with creative skills or help them develop already existing ones.

More than 50 refugees answered the organization’s call to form a team but only about half of them were selected based on their age and performance. “There was a strong demand and we have stopped accepting new arrivals for now”, says the team’s coach, Andreas Sabanis, whose day job involves selling paper bags and packaging material. A former footballer himself, Andreas always gives instructions to his players in English and uses the help of a Syrian translator when it gets more complicated. “Most of our players come from Syria and Afghanistan. Others come from Iraq, Iran, Morocco and Algeria and one of them, our goalkeeper, is from Uganda. We all speak different languages but we always find ways to communicate”, he says while getting ready to start the session. “Let’s get things moving shall we?”

With their blue studs and yellow jerseys, I have to say that the Hope Refugees team looks much more stylish than I expected. They’ve been warming up for a good half-hour and are now more than ready to face their opponents, a local high school team that has agreed to train together for the day. Time for introductions is short and a few inquisitive looks from both sides are enough of a greeting before the ball starts to roll. Am I supposed to take sides? Probably not. But I still catch myself bouncing with excitement every time the team scores a goal. Sitting next to me, the team’s doctor, Tania, makes the bench groan even more by jumping to her feet every five to ten minutes. “Our boys are calm. I’ve never seen them being aggressive when they play. And if they need my help it’s usually for simple things, like an ankle sprain or a small fall. I have this thing about goalkeepers though…when they fail to catch the ball they often fall down and lie there without moving, which freaks me out!”, she explains. It’s been nearly four years since Tania first started working for football clubs and she has had her fair share of balls thrown in her face. “Never on purpose though!”, she points out playfully.

The whistle blows; it’s halftime. With a score of three to two in favour of the Hope Refugees team, it’s time for a break and a bit of showing off to three schoolgirls walking past the field. A dribble or two seem to do the trick, and, soon enough, a new audience of giggling admirers is drawn to the fence. A bit further away, some players are mercilessly pouring water over their head, in an effort to cool off.

“Cold Ali, cold!” shouts Tania to a player standing in front of her. At only 22 years old, Ali, from Syria, is also the team’s manager and helps organize the training sessions every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Since mid-December, the team has also been competing in the ESEA tournament for amateur football leagues and holds a respectable record of three wins, two ties and two defeats. “From the moment we first started, four of our Syrian players have left us — three for Germany and one for Belgium — and now others are getting ready to leave as well. This means that the team’s structure changes constantly and we’re often looking for new players”, says Nikos Delagrammatikas, communications officer for the Organization Earth and reporter for the popular Olympiacos football club.

Their newest addition is Ahmad, from Afghanistan, who joined the team just a few days ago. Ahmad arrived in Greece in early 2016, after death threats from the Taliban forced him to flee his hometown, Kabul.

“When I was 11 years old I started working as a translator for the American Embassy there because my English was good and because my dream was to go, one day, to the United States. I used to spend half of my time at school and the other half working for them. But when you work for foreign people in Afghanistan, especially Americans, you are constantly targeted, so I had to escape”, he says.

Ahmad’s boat capsized, however, while he was trying to cross the Aegean Sea on his way to Europe, and he lost his most important possession: his passport. Unable to get any help from the American Embassy in Greece, he applied for asylum here, while living in a tent at the Malakassa camp. Since then, Ahmad got engaged and moved to a flat with his fiancé and mother-in-law, in the centre of Athens. He also spends his time learning Greek and teaching English for the Farsi speakers at the Orange House, in Eksarhia. But his biggest passion has always been football.

“We didn’t have many fields in Afghanistan so we were renting one field for around 55 euro per match. I could afford it because I earned quite a lot of money”, he says. “You know, maybe for some of these players here football is just a game to help pass the time. But for me it’s like a dream”, he adds, in his near-perfect English, his eyes fixed on the field. Looking at him sitting on the bench next to me, it’s hard to believe that Ahmad is only 19 years old. There’s a maturity in his ways that doesn’t seem to quite fit; as if maturity had come in a few big waves rather than many small ones and would be gladly pushed away if possible, along with all of the painful memories that brought it along.

A few moments later, the game is already over, with a score of five to two in favor of the Hope Refugees team. A wide smile spreads across Ahmad’s face as he jumps to his feet in order to join the rest of the team. Handshakes and high fives are in order while both coaches congratulate the players. Amongst them is Simon, the team’s 26 years old goalkeeper from Uganda. Unlike the rest of the team, Simon is a professional footballer, having already played for the Uganda Premier League in the past. He came to Greece in 2015 and currently shares a flat with a friend near Attiki metro station, while picking up a few jobs here and there. “I would like to continue playing football but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep training with the Hope Refugees team because I’ll probably have to work every Sunday from now on”, says Simon, who joined the team a few weeks ago. “Football needs concentration and it’s not easy when you’re trying to survive at the same time”, he adds.

“Aren’t you coming for lunch?”, says suddenly a voice to our right. It’s Lupa, the team’s youngest player who soon makes me realize we’re the only ones left on the field. Everyone else has already gone to the restaurant across the street, which serves meals provided by the organization Earth after every training session. Giouverlakia’, a Greek meetball soup, is on today’s menu. “Please, join us for lunch, you’re our guest here!”, says one of the players and brings me another chair.

Report by Myrto Vogiatzi.

Myrto is a journalist based in Athens, Greece, having previously been based at L’Orient-Le Jour in Beirut, Lebanon. She has contributed her work to publications in France, India and Greece, and in particular focuses on sociopolitical issues, developmental issues and international relations.

In the spirit of self-improvement at the start of a new year, Campfire Innovation has been catching up with some of our favourite Smart Aid teams…

Whether it’s about being better to one another, or to our planet, learning new skills or just being better informed, we all want this year to be better than the last.

This is felt deeply within the world of humanitarian aid, so we wanted to know what the experts think we should be focusing on if we want to be smarter in ’17.

We first spoke with Alison Terry-Evans to discuss why we should be protecting the planet in 2017. Alison founded Dirty Girls in 2015, as a response to the mountains of wet and dirty, but good quality clothing that she saw discarded by refugees arriving by sea on the island of Lesvos. Since then, her team has saved about 500 tonnes of material from landfill, and saved mammoth costs for the likes of UNHCR through recycling and laundering the rejected materials.

Campfire Innovation spoke to Alison about why the humanitarian aid community needs to recognise its ties to sustainability, and move the protection of the planet higher up its agenda when dealing with humanitarian crises.

CI: 2016 was a significant year for the refugee crisis and for environmental policy. At which point do these two causes meet?

AT: “They are intrinsically entwined. Millions of people are living transitory lives with newly acquired material belongings, which are mostly shed along their journeys.

“The materials can be rejected by because they’re difficult to carry, or because there’s no time to collect them before their owners are moved on to their next destination. Donated clothes are added to the load along the way, but as there is little to no provision for washing clothes, materials are often replaced as soon as they get dirty.

“This all makes sense for those travelling long distances for long, uncertain periods of time. However, what has really puzzled and infuriated me is seeing how clothing distribution centres have taken the dubious principles of a disposable society to heart. I’ve spent a lot of time retrieving items from dumpsters and other trash sites in the past 16 months, and I’ve come across many new donated items that have been thrown away…

“…New socks. Beautifully crocheted articles meant to bring love and warmth. Countless useful items that someone couldn’t be bothered dealing with? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer for such cavalier attitudes.

“These materials are treated as though they are worthless. Dirty Girls has saved what must be a miniscule percentage of rejected materials, and we have saved nearly 500 tonnes of material from becoming trash.”

CI: Do you feel that sustainability is treated as a priority in humanitarian aid at large?

AT: “Absolutely not.

“The UNHCR website states that it is “committed to protecting the environment and of the environmental challenges associated with hosting a large population in a small area”, but I have seen these principles ignored by a number of major organisations during my experiences in Greece.

“When Idomeni was vacated, the destruction of property was monumental. One could only think of all those well meaning people whose donations were bulldozed and piled on trucks as trash. Even as recently as this month, huge tents from Kara Tepe camp in Lesvos were sent straight to the municipal dump.

“We work with little support from some of these NGOs: we rescue, recycle and redistribute blankets and sleeping bags that they throw away. There is an attitude among certain organisations that they have plenty of blankets in their warehouses, so why bother to wash them? In reality, blankets don’t grow like mushrooms, but are bought with the money given by donors and appropriated from tax payers.”

CI: What does sustainability do for the individuals you work for?

ATE: “Stopping the trashing of clothes, literally by the tonnes each day at the height of arrivals, meant that not only did the environment benefit, but so did the people arriving on boats. Until then they were given only clothes that had been donated.

“Being able to choose from clothes recycled from people similar to themselves, refugees were able to replace their own wet and dirty clothes with ones that were more culturally appropriate, with appreciated styles and with a greater likelihood of size availability.

“We’ve often been told by volunteers in camps that without the truckloads of blankets brought by Dirty Girls, people would have been without because the INGOs would stick to the allocated numbers when distributing blankets so people would miss out.”

CI: What does sustainability do for the refugee crisis at large?

ATE: “It would lessen the huge carbon footprint that is being left and ignored. It would honour the value of donations from people who give in the good faith that their donations are valued. And I say say “would” because there is no “does” as yet.”

CI: How can we take sustainable practice to the next level in 2017?

AT: The next level is Level 1. There are no sustainable practices in evidence right now. Once again, I’m speaking of my experience in Greece alone.

CI: What goals do you think smart humanitarian aid should focus on in 2017?

To appropriate, but also to adhere to, the mission stated by UNHCR: this is from UNHCR’s website:

“Since the 1990s, we have become increasingly committed to protecting the environment and of the environmental challenges associated with hosting a large population in a small area.

“Over the course of the last two decades, we have set in place programmes and initiatives aimed at improving sustainable environmental management, aiming to reduce environmental degradation and enhance the resources available to the displaced, as well as host communities.”

ENDS

Alison was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Leading Global Thinkers of 2016, as she continues to fight for sustainable practices in humanitarian aid. Find out more about her work with Dirty Girls on their social media channels:

https://www.facebook.com/dirtygirlslesvos/

Dirty Girls Lesvos (@DirtyGirlsL) | Twitter

From being a place of transition to a de facto destination, Athens is home to an increasing number of urban refugees. Amid new challenges, two grassroots organisations stand out for their innovative responses to a humanitarian crisis that the state is unable to handle.

The traditional image of refugees living in flimsy tents no longer tells the whole story of refugee movements. More than 60 percent of the world’s 19.5 million refugees and 80 percent of all internally displaced persons today settle in urban areas. Mainly because, compared to the camps’ poor living and security conditions, cities allow refugees to find income generation activities and avoid being dependent on aid rations.

In Greece, where more than 60,000 women, men and children remain stranded in limbo as a result of the Balkan route closure and the failure of the EU relocation plan, cities are increasingly at the forefront of integrating new arrivals. Athens has moved from being a place of transition to a de facto destination, with refugees abandoning their makeshift settlements in Victoria Square or the ‘Pedion tou Areos’ park, and moving into hostels, looking at ways of learning the language and of enrolling their kids in school.

While such a change is understandably welcomed by refugee agencies, it entails significant challenges: refugees living in cities are dispersed, keep a low profile and often pass under the humanitarian radar, making it harder for aid agencies to protect and support them. They are also exposed to harassment, intimidation and discrimination, and live with the constant fear of being detained and returned forcibly to their home country.

Amid these challenges, urban refugee approaches remain limited. For so long organisations like UNHCR have been used to working in camp settings, and so the shift to providing assistance outside that zone has been a steep learning curve. Meanwhile, uncertainty makes it difficult for the debt-stricken capital to plan for the refugees’ temporary accommodation and integration, while overlapping responsibilities between the government and the city’s municipalities have frequently led to slow reactions or unnecessary spending. And, well, let’s face it: spending most of the time on resource planning and policy implementation isn’t exactly the ideal way to come up with the most inventive solutions.

In the midst of all this, citizens’ initiatives sometimes offer their assistance in refreshing ways. What they lack in resources or experience, they make up for in creativity and enthusiasm, finding their way into Athens’s chaotic effervescence. Amongst many, two have recently caught my attention, not only for their original approaches but mainly because of their efforts to assist refugees by promoting their social integration and allowing them to actively participate in their projects’ conception and implementation.

An Elephant’s journey in the heart of Athens

Being a journalist myself, I was naturally intrigued when, a few months ago, I first learnt about Solomon.gr, an online magazine that is run by a team of 25 people, both locals and refugees, with the aim of helping them “communicate and shape society together”, as noted on their website. Solomon Magazine’s name comes from the main character of the book “The Elephant’s Journey” by the Portuguese author Jose Saramago, in which an elephant named Solomon travels from India to Vienna, through Portugal. During his journeys on foot, Solomon is perceived differently in each place, making him a symbolic representative of refugees and immigrants.

The idea behind Solomon was conceived back in 2015 when Fanis Kollias, a 25 year old graduate of the Athens University of Economics and Business and humanitarian worker, met an Afghan refugee who had many skills and creative ideas but didn’t know where to turn to. He soon decided to create a magazine comprised only of refugees and immigrants, which was “the worst idea ever” as he later recalls. “I quickly understood that by making a project for the refugee you don’t allow him (or her) to integrate into society; instead, you show him that he will always need you”, he says during an interview at the Impact Hub’s small interior yard. “But if you sit down with him and tell him ‘listen, the society we’re both part of faces this specific problem — help me find a solution for it’, then we can start talking about integration”, he adds, urging the need to remove his ‘refugee’ label and see him as a human being.

Because of bureaucratic hurdles, the magazine’s first issue was published with a two-month delay, in March 2016. Since then, it has undergone multiple changes, such as the replacement of payable issues with separate articles free of charge. “The first three issues took too much work and we couldn’t have tight deadlines when most of the team’s members are not professional writers and have to get to work every day. We also didn’t have any designer to help us out”, explains Fanis, who used to spend his days and nights double-checking every little detail before the publishing deadline. To make it happen, he quit his job at Greenpeace and used his savings from his salary, until they ran out.

Even though Solomon’s current survival depends mainly on external funding and volunteering, Fanis hopes to turn it one day into a sustainable social enterprise. “I think that for a lot of people the word ‘enterprise’ has a negative connotation. There has been, for example, an experiment where children were asked to draw an entrepreneur, and they drew monsters and scary creatures…The same goes with journalists; they’re often resented, even though we need them”, he says.

If entrepreneurs and journalists are far from being worshipped, Solomon’s efforts to provide them with a joint social cause have been met with a great deal of positive feedback from Greece and abroad. Volunteers from all over the world, even Chile, have recently joined the team, giving Fanis the time to develop ideas for new projects or activities, such as the pairing of migrants and refugees with freelance journalists.

An ex-printing building turned into a haven for refugees

If you happened to go up Asklipiou Street over the last two months and you noticed colourful walls and irregular hammering sounds at some point on your right, you were standing next to Khora’s freshly established community centre. The Khora cooperative was created last spring by a group of international volunteers who met on Lesvos while working with Skipchen and the self-organised camp Better Days for Moria.

After Lesvos, the team decided to move to Athens and spent the summer providing more than 1000 meals a day to migrants and refugees, and running a shower block in Piraeus Port. It took them nearly three months to find and rent the eight-storey building and ex-printing shop that today provides refugees and migrants with meals, sanitation facilities, language courses and asylum case work. Self-defence and jewellery making classes, soap-making and puppet workshops, movie projections, computing seminars, cooking classes and many other activities are run in the centre.

But Khora is not only about charity. “Our main objective is social inclusion. It’s not about international volunteers helping out refugees. Everyone is involved, and in the end we want refugees to run their own projects, with us acting as their facilitators by raising the necessary funds for example”, says Becca, a 25 year old volunteer from London who first came to Greece in April. Self-defence and belly-dancing classes, first-aid courses, as well as Arabic and Farsi language courses are therefore run by refugees, while Hassan from Syria and Aziz from Senegal are helping out in the kitchen by cooking vegetarian meals and bringing a little taste of their home. The cooperative also plans to provide work for refugees by next summer, even if at the moment most of them don’t have the right to work.

Local residents are also involved in Khora’s initiatives, either by volunteering or by participating in the open meetings that take place every two weeks. “Slowly, there are more neighbours and people from the local area showing up at our door and asking if we need any help. And by being receptive to help and support wherever it comes from can a major difference. We listen to them, try and find out how they want to be involved so that the minute they walk through the door they feel like they’re part of it already”, she adds while smoking her cigarette in the building’s small yard. And it seems that the message has been spread across quite quickly, with volunteers of all ages coming in not only form neighbouring districts but also from Canada, Denmark, France, Iran, Morocco, Portugal, Syria, Switzerland, UK, the USA and other corners of the world. Some have stipends while others get by on their savings or the money they raised through their crowdfunding campaign. Those who stay more than one or two months can sometimes live in Khora’s volunteer flat, near Omonia, which can accommodate up to 16 people.

As enriching as it is to work with people coming from so many different backgrounds, coordination can be quite challenging. “During the first couple of weeks we held meetings for hours every day, but they were really necessary because communication is the key to everything, especially if you want to keep a flat hierarchy”, says Liska, a 27 year old Swiss founding member of the cooperative, before leading us to the children’s playroom.

The absence of hierarchy is one of the main reasons behind the team’s choice to form a cooperative instead of a non-governmental organisation. What’s more, the failure of so many humanitarian NGOs in Greece has made it very difficult, from a legal point of view, to create one, according to Liska. Although managing a cooperative has of course its bureaucratic challenges as well, especially if you’re accustomed to Switzerland’s order of things…“It’s ridiculous how complicated everything is. I’ve spent weeks in tax offices and even paying the electricity bill is complicated if you don’t have a Greek business bank account”, she sighed. With a bachelors in political science and a masters degree in International Development and Humanitarian emergencies, Liska seems modest when speaking about her past humanitarian work in Serbia or Lesvos. “She’s a veteran!”, says Becca with enthusiasm.

Compared with short term volunteers, who mainly take care of Khora’s day to day activities, volunteers who stay for an extended period of time, like Becca or Liska, are usually the ones handling most of its strategic activities, including looking for grants and donations that help finance the projects. Some of the biggest grants were received by the “Help Refugees” and “Giving for a better future” humanitarian organisations, as well as volunteer-led fundraising groups: 50.000 euros were raised last June from the UK based volunteer group “Thighs of Steel” who cycled from London to Athens in just six weeks. Khora refuses however to receive any support from the local authorities. “We’re a group of people with many different political ideologies and religious backgrounds and in some ways working with them would mean we’re accepting their political measures and the fact that they’re not doing that they’re supposed to do”, says Becca. Next to her, Jungle, Liska’s dog, lays indifferently on the floor with his eyes half-opened.

It’s nearly 7 pm, time for Liska and Becca to join an open meeting and for me to explore the rest of Khora’s universe. I slowly make my way up to the first floor where blue and yellow tiles surround what looks like professional cooking equipment. Behind it, a smiling woman prepares pasta in red sauce and a green salad for tonight’s dinner. Where is everyone? I wonder, but my thoughts are quickly diverted by two loud bangs coming from upstairs. The noises grow stronger as I walk up the stairs and I soon find myself in the middle of a self-defence class, hosted at the cooperative’s popular ‘social café’ where everyone can sit down, eat and relax. As I later found out, the café is also used for performances and events such as the Khora Cinema Club, music nights and open meetings.

Things get a bit more serious on the third floor, occupied by three classrooms, a library and a soon-to-be computer room. Dozens of students are leaving the classrooms while their teachers repeat their homework for the next time. “We should not interrupt the teachers, we should do our homework, we should not arrive late to class…” says the classroom’s wall, next to freshly conjugated verbs on the blackboard.

Sitting on a sofa next to a small wooden table, 15 year old Hazara Gatsalov has just completed his Greek language course. Hazara and his family spent 24 days traveling from Afghanistan to Turkey, where they were immediately arrested due to the simultaneous Balkan route closure. They remained in Turkey for more than a month before reaching Hios, and then Athens. “We’ve been in Greece for seven months now, and we want to join my brother in Germany through the family reconciliation program”, he says.

Despite their uncertain future, Hazara spends hours learning Greek at the cooperative every day, by taking the bus from Elliniko station. “Hazara is one of the best students in my class”, says Maria, his 28 year old American teacher, smiling at him proudly. It’s been three weeks since Maria started volunteering for Khora through the Refugee Language Initiative organization, although she has already worked with refugees in South Korea and the United States. “I find it difficult sometimes to explain concepts and ideas but once you’ve passed a basic level, it gets much easier because you have more vocabulary to work with”, she adds, with books in her arms. On her left, the floor’s small library is patiently waiting for its next visitors, offering foreign language textbooks but also gripping reads, such as Agatha Christie’s detective novels, Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 or Jack London’s White Fang.

As for the cooperative’s top floors, which I wasn’t able to visit, they host a women’s space, a private meeting room for legal or psychological support, the community centre office, a music room as well as a dentistry, made available through donated time from dentists in Athens.

Report by Myrto Vogiatzi.

Myrto is a journalist based in Athens, Greece, having previously been based at L’Orient-Le Jour in Beirut, Lebanon. She has contributed her work to publications in France, India and Greece, and in particular focuses on sociopolitical issues, developmental issues and international relations.

The humanitarian hackathon, coordinated by US Embassy Athens, Impact Hub and the Onassis Cultural Centre, saw another three days of exciting collaboration and dialogue between the competing teams and expert mentors at Impact Hub Athens. The result was an impressive line-up of projects that all addressed the global crisis’ persistent need for everything from communication to sanitation to information.

Hack the Camp winner Native Net zoned in on the need for viable informative resources within camps throughout Greece, and was praised for its close engagement with the communities that would benefit from these tools. The team beat some seriously tough competition, notably its fellow finalists, the refugee job and skill connector Refergon, and Autonomous Water Supply, who invented an innovative hygiene product to support safety in camps.

What really shone through the work of each team was an understanding of the complex web of different structural barriers that humanitarian work increasingly needs to navigate, and their ingenuity in meeting these challenges made for a powerful competition.

At the end of the event, the US Embassy pledged to make its own influential network available to each of these teams, extending the potential for continued development. Onassis Centre representative and judging panelist Efi Tsiotsiou also stressed the need to persevere with these visions and passions, reminding those gathered at Impact Hub of the long and winding road ahead for the evolution of refugee aid and integration.

You can get to know each of these smart aid projects below… we’re sure you’ll be hearing more from all of them again soon.*

Autonomous Water Supply

The project presentations were started with the only physical prototype of the competition: Autonomous Water Supply, a mobile hygiene kit for vulnerable refugees. Comprising bathroom essentials that can be moved with ease, the invention responded to the pervasive threat of abuse in camps by giving residents greater privacy and agency in their washing routines.

This innovative team had also captured the potential revenue stream that would ensure the product remained free to refugees, with plans to market the product as an equally useful tool to outdoor camping sellers.

Native Net

Winner Native Net presented its centralised information point, which was supported by an app with further information available in Greek, Farsi and Arabic. It stressed the pressing need for refugees to learn Greek, and provided scope for a network that included educational bodies as well as social support information.

This type of informative resource is in high demand in camps throughout Greece, and Native Net’s plans to develop further mapping tools and research is a promising step for the further development of essential refugee info points.

Refergon

“We’re not just hacking the camp, we’re hacking the job market”, proclaimed Refergon, a project set on evolving the conventional recruitment tools available online and via apps to support refugees in Europe.

This innovative recruitment tool would enable refugees to register skills, experience and preferences for employers looking to support them, and would match them with appropriate career prospects. The team also provided opportunities for unskilled refugees arriving in Europe, connecting them with the appropriate educational and training resources.

HopeStarter

The approach detailed by HopeStarter was emblematic of how far online technology can be integrated into humanitarian support.

This project seeks to connect donors with individual recipients of funding, using an online vetting system to keep those donating informed as to the individuals being supported and their progress, with payments being made via Bitcoin. The presentation showed a cohesive approach to connecting Europe’s refugees with meaningful monetary support.

Co-Producing the Camp

The all-architect team of Co-producing the Camp presented a simple but significant challenge to the current approach to humanitarian aid: engage and involve refugee camp residents with the structuring and management of the camps in which they live.

Europe is now in the second phase of its refugee crisis, in which the emergency landing sites are now longer-term places of residence, bringing new requirements for community support. Co-producing the Camp insisted that the viability of its project was not its ingenuity, but rather its tried and tested best practices, with the encouraging testimonial that NGOs, camp managers and camp residents are already proving receptive to this approach.

EterArt

If there were any need for proof of the evolving nature of smart humanitarian aid, the prodigious EterArt certainly presented a heartening look at the immediate future of global development aid. Comprising mainly high school students, InterArt took a compassionate and pragmatic approach to providing non-verbal communication with vulnerable refugees through fine art and performing art workshops. This scalable model could be applied to other vulnerable social groups, and was awarded a Distinctive participant commendation by the judging panel.

Radio Transit

One of the more unique projects was Radio Transit, which produced an online platform to showcase the individual stories of refugees, enable direct communication of these stories.

This uses a mobile recording unit (bike with a recording studio set up on a trailer) to provide activities such as workshops and live broadcast of web radio session by refugees at Greece’s camps. Participating refugees then record their messages in the booth, which gets directly translated by high tech immediate translation, to bring the whole message to the world, with no editing, no mediator, no translator (proprietary tech).

Match & Teach Me

A mobile app that allows users to post their profiles and find online courses for languages and coding. The aim is to help refugee integrate by learning the local language and developing skills in coding which will allow them to have access to meaningful, well-paid work opportunities rather than low-skilled temporary jobs.

*What happens next?

The winner, second and third place finalists of Hack the Camp were awarded $10,000, $6,000 and $4,000 respectively. These teams also receive counselling services lasting four months in Impact Hub Athens, and will have the option of joining the Microsoft BizSpark programme.

Hack The Camp is organized by the Impact Hub Athens, the Roof of the Onassis Foundation and the US Embassy in Athens with the cooperation of two international organizations with extensive experience in organizing hackathons with humanitarian orientation: the Creative Associates of America and the International Alert from Great Britain.

While travelling through Khora Community Centre’s seven floors of creative and collaborative space, it was phenomenal to see how far the project has come in such a short span of time. The centre has only been open for two months, but the floors are full of life and activity.

About Khora

Khora is a humanitarian co-operative, founded by volunteers that had previously worked in the crisis hotspots of Calais, France (with Skipchen) and Moria, Lesvos (Together for Better Days), as well as Serbia and mainland Greece.

This team has since founded and developed a base in Athens, where it combines volunteer skills and resources to create a centre of available information, comfort and community for the city’s refugees and friends.

The result is a patchwork building of classes, kitchens and workshops, populated by refugees, locals and volunteers: but don’t let the cheerful, laid-back atmosphere fool you. Our tour revealed a serious organisation, whose vision for developing a sustainable resource point is as structured and resilient as the seven floors that house it.

A Tour of Khora

Starting from the basement workshop, we saw some innovative projects in progress, including a bed for a disabled refugee in the community and a new kitchen table. The workshop has allowed Khora to keep costs down by building what is needed, and is open to the community. To book time in the workshop, you are encouraged to “drop in and chat” about arranging a good day and time.

Passing through the ground floor, the child care area was quietly running, and on the first floor the kitchen smelled amazing, as the kitchen crew prepared its daily open lunch. The open lunch, as the title suggests, is open to everyone in the community. Its hopes are that it encourages refugees and local Greek families to meet and eat together, and is prepared with locally sourced fresh ingredients.

Refugees are involved in running Khora throughout many of its activities, but it is in the food preparation and serving that you can see the extent of community pride in action. Delicious food is prepared in the morning, there are no queues to wait in to be served, and when the food is ready, the volunteers serve Khora’s visitors, restaurant style.

We sailed through to the second floor that houses the social cafe and open space. There we saw some locals preparing tea and admired the tables and benches that were all made in house from recycled materials. We heard about some of the self-defence and soap making classes that had recently been held there, as well as the interest from the community about the potential for many new workshops and classes. On the third floor, we peeked in on one of the three (three!) classrooms in session, as well as the new computer lab that is undergoing final stages.

On the fourth floor we marvelled at the cosy Women’s Space and swiftly developing dentistry room. The iconic dental chair was ready to go, and as soon as the cabinets are installed and final licensing completed, the services will be ready to roll out to the community. We chatted with Liska and Panagiotis on the fifth floor about Khora’s burst to success and rapid growth in a short time and the future plans for this warm and welcoming space.

Looking for Smart Aid Solutions

The Khora collective encapsulates collaborative grassroots working. It encourages new ideas from volunteers and visitors, and produces the sense that you are watching ideas evolve in front of you as you observe the centre’s separate spaces.

This sense of autonomy and spontaneity is supported by real, intelligent Smart Aid. Co-founder Liska Bernet stresses that we are still in the formative stages of a long-term refugee crisis, and that the resources Khora is developing reflect long-term requirements. As the global refugee crisis increasingly spills out into the streets of Europe, organisations like Khora will continue to play a significant role in shaping urban communities.

The remaining floors of the centre are in the process of being developed into legal offices, while the group continues to work with HelpRefugees, RefuComm and Holes in the Borders to deliver a reliable information point that empowers the city’s refugees. Khora’s accommodation of these more complex resolutions to essential refugee needs reveals the steely determination beneath the relaxed, safe space it has created.

We’re looking forward to following Khora on its continued development of smart aid resources for Europe’s refugees.

For more on Khora, and how you can support them, visit:

ABOUT US

https://www.facebook.com/KhoraAthens/

http://www.campfireinnovation.org/projects

Eleonas was Greece’s first refugee camp and, according to Project Elea founder and manager, Andreas Ashikalis, it will likely be the last one standing. When you consider the camp’s growing population, this seems a reasonable assumption: Eleonas is home to approximately 2,200 residents, divided into three camps, and this population continues to grow steadily each day.

The camp is described in glowing terms within the humanitarian aid sector: hailed as the “model camp”, Eleonas has nurtured a unique community in downtown Athens.

When you meet Project Elea, this too makes perfect sense. The scale of this NGO’s ambitions for the camp’s community has seen the team pitching plans to the Greek Ministry for industrial kitchens, improved education and increased autonomy for Eleonas residents.

We were struck by the way that dignity and respect were both woven into every aspect of Project Elea’s operations, from its tightly scheduled team coordination meetings to signs in the office with the same reminders. It’s natural to get frustrated doing volunteer work, especially with language barriers and refugees’ needs being so overwhelming. However, having the support of longer term volunteers and a team can make all the difference in the world.

About Project Elea

Andreas tells Campfire Innovation that “the residents [at Eleonas] tell us, these are not their homes — their old homes are gone, and their new ones are somewhere else in Europe”. This sentiment seems to inform the Project Elea agenda, which provides as many community-centric projects as possible, in order to alleviate the boredom and stresses of a life in limbo.

Project Elea started out providing the food and NFI distribution at Eleonas. However, its remarkable influx of enthusiastic volunteers enabled Elea to expand its vision, and go beyond the provision of basic resources to produce a new definition of what we mean when we talk about a “liveable” environment.

Its current line-up of on-site activities include Children’s Activities/Daycare, Children’s Supplementary Schooling, Sports and Leisure Activities, Women’s Self Expression, Skills Workshops and Movie Nights.

Most recently, Project Elea has secured funding for the Library and Learning Centre it has been working so hard for. The centre will be a vibrant community space that the camp’s residents can all use to access learning opportunities suited to their interests.

The full scope of services offered will, in true Project Elea style, will depend on what the residents tell the team they want and need. In the meantime, the team is considering the addition of a lending library, incorporated German and English language activities, story time for children, creative writing and poetry sessions, CV writing workshops, and further education and job matching.

All the community activities are facilitated by a team of volunteers that get stuck into whichever task interests or inspires them, and they are encouraged to add more ideas that can improve community engagement.

Looking for Smart Aid Solutions

Unlike some other smart aid organisations, Project Elea’s evolution was fuelled by manpower. The response from the volunteer community to Eleonas is in many respects Project Elea’s most distinctive quality, and has enabled it to evolve into an innovative community model.

The connection also doesn’t fade when the volunteers go home — the Project Elea volunteer diaspora has already seen fundraising concerts held in Spain, with more slated for throughout Europe over the coming months. Its record of retaining interest and engagement from those that come and work for the project elevates its offer beyond other similar organisations.

Project Elea’s work adds new dimensions to our perception of humanitarian aid, and the scale of its ambition is commendable. The team tells us “We’re dealing with a small bandage for a huge wound…there is a lot that is not being fixed”, adding that their set of principles is explicitly designed to address the gaps in humanitarian aid, whether it’s discipline, structure, education about the environment, conditioning respect for the other cultures you live alongside. Andreas then stresses: “these are the important issues that all children need an opportunity to learn about.”

In addition to the requirements stipulated by the EU, UN and other governing bodies, Project Elea has its own carefully plotted plan for what constitutes human needs, and a long-term vision for how they can successfully implement these features within the camp.

For more information on Project Elea, and how you can support them, you can visit:

http://projectelea.org/about-us/

https://www.facebook.com/projectelea.volunteers/

Lisa Campbell is speaking to Campfire Innovation in Do Your Part’s small Oinofyta office, where a handful of her 13-strong volunteer team squeeze in, ready to show us around their camp’s unique community.

If 13 seems a small number of volunteers for an organisation that oversees camp management, NFI and food distribution, this is because it is deliberate. Rather than relying on volunteers, over half of the residents at Oinofyta are involved in providing the camp’s support services, with resident participation helping stabilise internal community relations and prepare refugees for their eventual integration into European society.

About Oinofyta

Oinofyta is a majority Afghani camp (population: 650+) that has experienced a major evolution within its relatively short 9-month lifespan. Having started with a “big family” structure, the site tripled in size within ten days following the closure of Piraeus camp and the relocation of its residents.

This introduction of new ethnic and cultural groups to a previously homogenous community indicated a natural upheaval. However, the response from Do Your Part, Armando Aid and others has seen the camp’s warehouses, gardens, kitchens and schools become a microcosm of the multicultural workplaces and neighbourhoods that await the residents in Europe.

Residents working side by side has helped nurture Oinofyta’s key philosophies of participation and self-determination, but slowly introduces cultural changes as well. In an overheard conversation, a Do Your Part volunteer explains the need for a mixed gender sewing workshop by saying “one day you will be working with women”, before the resident passes this message back to the community for discussion.

Life in Oinofyta

The roles available at Oinofyta range from food and clothing distribution to sewing, cooking, cleaning, hairdressing, security and tending the camp’s chicken coop. Preparing the next generation is an equally evident priority, with classes in English, Farsi, Maths and Science overseen by Layhing Siu Munro and Mohammad, a displaced school principal from Kabul.

In the wake of UNHCR figures that show only 50% of refugee children are receiving the necessary primary school education, with that figure halved for high school age students, a wander through Armando Aid’s candy coloured classrooms restores a glimmer of hope.

Like Do Your Part, Armando Aid’s team has worked to weave a community identity throughout every aspect of their learning environment. This is visible in the bright, distinctive school itself, and in the engagement from residents in supporting this solid curriculum for the children based at the camp. As the pupils eagerly scramble for a tape measure, ready to record the area and perimeter of Oinofyta, there is a welcome sense of normality instilled in this everyday field trip.

Looking for Smart Aid Solutions

Europe is now entering the second major phase of the global refugee crisis: understanding and facilitating integration.

Oinofyta is inspiring because it shows that community inclusion can begin while refugees remain in transit, with sustainable services and community participation helping bridge the gap towards a more stable way of life. Do Your Part’s cap on external volunteer numbers reflects a smart strategy, as well as a sad reality of crisis management: it is not sustainable to rely on a revolving door of volunteers if there is still no end point in sight for Europe’s refugees.

With waiting times in camp often long-term, Lisa’s words carry a deep resonance.

Camps are no longer waiting rooms, so must be structured to support learning and development, and to build nurturing communities in their own right.

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Want to find out more about the work being done in Oinofyta? Check out the websites of Do Your Part and ArmandoAid below!

www.dyp3.doyourpart.org

www.facebook.com/ArmandoAid