Enrich the lives of refugees in Greece with books

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well.

I’m writing to share with you our most recent developments.

The We Need Books Multilingual Library and Community Centre remains closed to the public due to the COVID-19 health crisis since the second national lockdown took effect this past November. These are challenging times and the lives of millions of people around the globe have been disrupted. As bad as these disruptions are for most of us, and they are of incalculable consequences, the Covid-19 health crisis has dramatically worsened the suffering of migrants and refugees. Limited access to information due to language and cultural barriers; limited, if any access to national health care systems, marginalization of migrants and refugee communities. The lives of refugees were already hard but the pandemic has made them nearly impossible. We Need Books with your contributions and solidarity is committed to alleviating the hardship of the refugees in the Greek islands, and not only, by getting books to them in their native language.

On Giving Tuesday 2020, we launched a micro project to buy books for the children and adults in the camps. Although we did not reach our goal we managed to place orders for $1,000 worth of Arabic books and $1,800 in Farsi and Kurdish. The next order and we hope to place it soon, will be for books in Urdu. And it’s quite exciting to report that the first shipment from Jordan has been received. We are in touch with groups of refugees in the different camps and they are expecting them to start their own little libraries.

The pandemic lockdowns and very tight restrictions since March 2020 have cut refugees in the camps off from the outside world, reducing freedom of movement, and activities, and access to education of any form.  Access to books can make a huge difference. Access to books in the native language maintains important links to family, community, culture, and heritage.

Book Power 

Books feed and cure and

chortle and collide.

In all this willful world
of thud and thump and thunder
man’s relevance to books
continues to declare.

Books are meat and medicine
and flame and flight and flower,
steel, stitch, and cloud and clout,
and drumbeats in the air.

We are quite aware that the pandemic has created dire needs in so many areas. Your support and solidarity during these challenging times mean so much. With deep gratitude thank you for your time and continuous support.

In  solidarity,

Ioanna Nisyriou

Managing Director & Co-founder

We Need Books