Share Hope with Refugees at Camp Oinofyta Greece

Nine months have passed in the Oinofyta Refugee Camp, and Do Your Part is going strong with the help of our wonderful donors. Since the last report, we have finished the waterproofing on the roof and also took on the task to bring all of the residents in from the tents by building out the upstairs section of the building. With the help of a great contractor, we have built 11 dorm style rooms and one bathroom block with seven showers, five toilets and five sinks, and have moved 100 single people upstairs. Now all of the families are downstairs on the main floor level!

Three weeks ago, the Ministry of Migration announced that we are now a permanent camp. At the ribbon cutting ceremony for the upstairs build-out, the representative told us that the reason that we have become a permanent camp is because of the work that has been done by our team here. We are very proud of and grateful for all of the volunteers who have come and helped us get to this point.

We continue to provide fresh vegetables and fruit for the residents as well as a weekly distribution of rice, lentils, chickpeas, tomato paste, sugar, salt and tea. Our third kitchen will be ready to open next week and that will give us 45 burners for the families to cook on. The stainless steel shelving means that it will last and be very easy to clean.

We now have 100 hens in the chicken coop and are getting around 40 eggs per day. The Beauty/Barber shop is open five days a week and the residents are very happy to have this service onsite. The sewing center is busy with people altering and repairing clothing and this week they have begun to produce tote bags that will be sold online to allow the residents to earn some extra money. We are using the extra clothing that has been donated that is not appropriate for the residents to wear to make the tote bags. Do Your Part provides the other supplies that are needed to make these bags, thanks to the generosity of our donors.

Our team is in charge of all distribution from the warehouse and we continue to source hygiene products, diapers, baby wipes, formula and cleaning supplies. With the help of the residents, the warehouse does distribution five days a week and we have special distributions a few times a month.

Now that we are officially a permanent camp, we have begun to remove the tents from outside. This has been a wonderful thing for the residents, to know that they will not have to be in tents this winter. The temperatures here reach below freezing for a few weeks and living in a tent is not an ideal situation.

We are moving on to the second phase of building infrastructure now and we are hoping to provide a compact sewage treatment plant for the camp. We have a long wish-list of things that we want to provide for the community and will be working hard to accomplish this list. We hope that our donors will continue to support us in this endeavor so that we can continue to help the refugee population as they move on to their new lives.

Thank you so much for all the support you have provided.