Justice and Human Rights Greece Project #28724

Global Refugee Fund

by IsraAID

Project Report | Oct 19, 2020
Fires in Moria Refugee Camp

By IsraAID Staff | IsraAID Greece

Overnight on September 8th, fires ravaged through the Moria Refugee Camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, the largest of its kind in Europe. Over the course of the following 24-48 hours, the majority of the camp was burned down. More than 12,000 refugees - mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria - were left without a place to sleep or access to vital services provided by humanitarian actors, including hygiene supplies and education for children.

In the days leading up to the fires, there had been 35 positive cases of COVID-19 reported among the population of Moria. Since the destruction of the camp, cases have continued to rise. Social distancing and safe hygiene practices became even more challenging as people slept on the sides of the road and in orchards.

The Greek government has constructed a temporary camp on Lesbos, which currently accommodates 9,600 people. The living conditions in Moria were harsh, with minimal access to necessary services, but the infrastructure in the new camp is even more limited.

IsraAID has been working in Lesbos for five years and our team on the ground was able to respond immediately. Despite severely restricted access to both Moria and the new temporary camp, we were able to distribute essential non-food items together with partner organizations and IsraAID team members who lived in the camp. IsraAID’s team distributed tents, sleeping bags, and power banks; 1,500 personal hygiene kits including soap, hand sanitizer and reusable face masks made at our refugee community center in northern Greece; in addition to 182 family hygiene kits and 25 baby packs to families living around the site of the old camp.

IsraAID’s ongoing program in Lesbos focuses on expanding access to education for refugee children. In addition to focusing on meeting urgent physical needs after the fire, our team has worked to provide psychosocial and education support for children affected by the emergency. We have distributed 500 activity and education packs for children aged 2-6 and 7-12 inside the temporary camp. The packs include arts and crafts materials, worksheets and activity books that work as a psychosocial support aid for children. Interventions like these are crucial to mitigating the potential psychological effects of traumatic experiences.

IsraAID has also launched a capacity building program for refugee teachers from our educational facility adjacent to Moria. With themes like “stress management”, “health, hygiene and safety”, “child protection”, and “psychological first aid”, the program provides teachers with the resources and knowledge to support their students – and themselves – at this difficult time. Each member of the refugee community has already suffered their own trauma; capacity building supports them in building themselves as individuals, as well as a community.

N., 25 years old, is a refugee from Afghanistan. N. teaches at IsraAID’s Secret Garden Educational Center, providing social and emotional learning in Dari for children from Afghanistan.

N. had this to say about their role as a teacher: “Teaching for me is like a painkiller, it allows me to forget the pain, everything that bothers me and doesn’t let me feel okay. When I walk into the classroom, I feel so much energy from the children that I can’t allow myself to be down, it makes me focus and put myself together. I am looking forward to resuming our classes with kids from the camp.”

N. has been taking part in IsraAID’s capacity building program for teachers, learning new techniques to better support children from the refugee community after the fires.

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Jun 22, 2020
The Places Where Handwashing is a Privilege

By IsraAID Staff | IsraAID HQ

How do we get through this crisis? It’s the question on everyone’s lips. By now, we’re used to hearing – and following – all the key messages. Stay inside. Keep at least two meters away from anyone else. Wash. Your. Hands.

But what happens in places where these important public health instructions aren’t just a shift in lifestyle, they’re basically impossible? That is the reality for many of the world’s refugees.

In Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwest Kenya, home to more than 190,000 refugees who have fled conflict across the region, water is in short supply. IsraAID runs three safe spaces in the camp offering daily activities, education and – crucially – safe water for children. The new regulations brought in to help control the spread of the virus have forced our team to temporarily suspend these activities. But without these safe spaces, many children in the camp will be at greater risk. Add to that severe shortages of medical facilities and personnel and it’s clear that a coronavirus outbreak in Kakuma could be devastating.

Thousands of miles north of Kakuma, the Greek island of Lesbos is one of the main entry points to Europe for refugees fleeing conflict and political persecution in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. Many of them end up in Moria Refugee Camp. More than 20,000 people have been pushed into a camp designed for just over 3,000. The day-to-day potential for harm has now been coupled with the risks of a global pandemic, and fears about a potential outbreak in Moria have risen as cases of COVID-19 have been reported on the island.

In order to meet the challenges of the pandemic head-on, our teams are coming up with creative solutions to keep programs running and contribute to a global effort to reduce the spread of the disease. In some places, like Greece, where most of the refugees we work with have access to smartphones, we are transitioning our classes and services online or providing activity ideas and homework for children.

In Kenya, in addition to food supplements to combat malnutrition, we are donating other basic and medical supplies, including soap, hand sanitizer, malaria test kits, and more.

We will get through this thanks to a big, shared effort on the part of governments, businesses, NGOs, and communities. No one has all the answers, but if we first acknowledge that we’re all in this together and that everyone can play their part, then that is an important start. For IsraAID, this means doubling down on our commitment to the often-vulnerable communities we work with to help navigate a safe path through this crisis by providing public health information, distributing hygiene supplies, putting classes and trainings online where possible, and – yes – making sure people can wash their hands.

Thank you for supporting refugees around the world.

Links:

Full Article: The places where handwashing is a privilege

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Feb 24, 2020
Support Refugee & IDP Women in South Sudan

By IsraAID Staff | South Sudan

Today, conditions in South Sudan are dire: 80% of the country’s population lives on less than a dollar a day; 7.1 million people are in need of aid; and 1.83 million are internally displaced persons (IDPs). Women in South Sudan are among the most vulnerable groups. When fighting breaks out, women are deliberately targeted: rape is used as a weapon of war; domestic violence rates spike in part due to emotional distress; and weak reporting mechanisms leave survivors with inadequate support.

Overwhelming instability and consistent mass movement exacerbates service provision, buckling under a renewed stream of survivors in desperate need of basic services. The region’s long history of violence and displacement, as well as high levels of food insecurity, malnutrition, and potential for the spread of disease, leave these communities with overwhelming emotional distress and limited access to urgently needed support.

Each of IsraAID's 12 WGFS offers a core set of services complemented by additional activities based on requests from community members; these include:

Case management for survivors of GBV, including emergency support, individual counseling, and access to referral pathways.
Women’s groups focusing on trauma relief, psychosocial support activities, livelihood training, and literacy and numeracy classes.
Community strengthening activities focusing on bolstering structures that can mitigate the risk of GBV, and advocate for a culture of prevention. These awareness raising activities seek to break down stigmas and taboos, encourage use of reporting mechanisms, and end harmful practices such as child marriage, forced marriage, domestic abuse, sex trafficking, and rape.
Menstrual Hygiene Management workshops reach out to women and girls of reproductive age, providing them with reusable sanitary pads, training them on production of sanitary pads, and teaching sexual and reproductive health modules.

IsraAID social workers first met Faizah during a March 2019 awareness-raising session. 25 years old, she has been separated from her parents since 2016, when they fled from South Sudan to Bidi-Bidi refugee camp in Uganda. Faizah was left to support herself. Despite working hard, she could no longer afford to pay for her basic necessities - even lunch.

Faizah decided to marry Asim, a man of around 40 years old, in August 2018. She hoped to settle down and ensure that her needs, such as food and medicine, were provided for, despite the deteriorating economic conditions in South Sudan.

Quickly, Faizah’s marriage became the cause of new problems. She was subjected to daily physical violence by her husband, even losing two teeth and suffering serious back injuries from the beatings. She had hoped to travel to Uganda to reunite with her parents, but could not afford the cost of the journey.

Faizah joined IsraAID’s Women Group sessions. She received both medical and psychosocial support, facilitated by IsraAID. She soon described a new sense of hope, self-belief, and regained strength. She has now started to move on with her life away from Asim.

Through support and guidance from the social workers, Faizah was empowered to return to work, starting a small-scale tea business in a village. She has escaped the violence and the control of her husband, renting her own tukul and living independently.

Faizah continues to attend the IsraAID Women’s Group, and has committed to empowering fellow women who find themselves in similar situations to her own.

Thank you for supporting this program!

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