Hello friends,
We are coming to the end of an amazing year at Habibi and Sport with Refugees. It has not been without its challenges; the war in Ukraine severely impacted our funding in the first half of the year; the camps dwindling population; the construction of the wall around the camp and other measures by Greek police to curtail human rights of refugees.
However, in the last 2 months, there have been many new arrivals to all of the camps around Ioannina, and our activities have started to fill up again, and there is more life and new energy in the project. It has been very difficult for new arrivals to adjust to living in such a remote place with very few services, compared to Lesvos or Athens. It has really shown how important it is that people have a space to go to chill out, practice sport together and get out of the camp for a few hours. The community of teachers, students and volunteers is a very supportive one, and having refugees in the lead of our activities makes outreach to the camp so much more straightforward and welcoming.
In other news, this is my final report for you all. After almost 1 and a half years, I am leaving Ioannina and moving to Lesvos, where I will continue working with Yoga and Sport with Refugees. This project is one of the most amazing things I have ever been part of. It has really shown me how we can do things differently, and flip the script on a lot of the norms in humanitarian work. It has never been perfect but we always looking for ways to improve and grow, to amplify and make space for the voices of refugees to be the most important in the organisation.
I am also very happy to say that Lena, who will take over as Project Coordinator, is an amazing woman who has been supporting our volleyball teachers for 6 months, on top of her work as Precious Plastic supervisor for our partner Habibi.Works. She knows the project inside out and for sure will do a great job.
Finally, I want to of course thank you for your continued support of our work. In really difficult circumstances, your donation allows people to create connections and build community, making refugees more resilient. And as always, we would be eternally grateful to you if you would consider sharing our project with your network. I have attached the monthly reports of the last 2 months to get a more in-depth feel for the goings on in the wider community of Yoga and Sport with Refugees.
In solidarity,
Maeve
Links:
Hello!
I hope you are enjoying a relaxing summer, wherever you are (unless you are Irish where it is already officially Autumn). Before we get to all the updates from Ioannina, I would firstly like to once again thank you so much for your continued support of our project. Times are really tough for organisations supporting refugees in Greece right now, so your donation really makes all the difference.
In good news, many of our incredible teachers received their papers in the last few months, and have moved on from Greece with their families. This is of course bittersweet for us, but we are happy that they are finally out of the limbo of the Greek asylum system. And, leaving Habibi and Sport never means leaving our community. Our former teachers Rahmat and Eisa are now leading the team setting up the new Yoga and Sport project in Paris, teaching boxing, fitness and running, Payman and Sakineh have classes in their camps in Germany teaching boxing and yoga respectively, and all the team in Germany have been making the most of the cheap summer public transport to have Habibi and Sport meet-ups regularly in different cities. This constant movement and change in the team in Ioannina also leaves space for us to give leadership opportunities to more refugees, who bring fresh ideas and energy to the project.
One of the most difficult goodbyes was for our amazing Community Coordinator, Fereshte, who left Greece with her family just this week. Her work in encouraging and empowering more women to take part in the project, meant that for the last 2 months, there were more women than men in our activities, which is a first for any Yoga and Sport project.
We now say hello to our new Coordinator, Emily, who is from Scotland. She has a background in Human Rights Law and has been working in Jordan with displaced people for the last 6 months, and previously in Geneva supporting Human Rights Defenders.
I have attached the last three monthly reports of Yoga and Sport with Refugees, so you can get a taster for all the activities happening across the 4 YSR projects.
Finally, I unfortunately have to reiterate the crisis in funding for our project. Many public and private donors have stopped funding projects in Greece as - understandably - money continues to be funneled into supporting the Ukrainian relief effort. If you appreciate and value the work that we do, please share our story with your friends and family and encourage them to start a monthly donation, however small. Every euro helps. As we approach the 1 year anniversary of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, see renewed violence in DRC and ongoing conflict in Kurdistan it is important to remember that the people we work with also need support. The Greek government is doing its best to curb human rights of non-Ukrainian refugees, to push their needs under the rug, to leave them to die in small boats without engines in the Aegean, to hide them behind walls, and in closed camps on remote islands. NGOs are trying to fill the gaps intentionally created with Greek and EU money. We are just one of the organisations providing access to safe spaces, to leadership positions and to community. We urgently need more donations to continue our work.
So please tell people, put us in contact with people in media, get an influencer to shout out our page, contact us to start a fundraising event, anything you can do is so so so appreciated.
Hello!
Thank you as always for your ongoing support of our project. We are growing and moving all the time. I have attached the monthly report of our main partner, Yoga and Sport with Refugees, which includes a summary of our activities in March in Ioannina. Let us know if you enjoy it!
The biggest news is that we have a new Coordinator, Fereshte, from Afghanistan, who is joining Marta and I in the Coordination Team. We are so happy to have someone from a refugee background who can bring her skills, talents and deep knowledge of the community to the project.
As always, we really appreciate it if you can spread the word about Habibi and Sport in your networks. As funds are being diverted to support the crisis in Ukraine, we need more support than ever to continue our work with refugees in Greece.
Yours in Sport,
Maeve
Hello!
Happy Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Chinese New Year, Happy Springtime - for those of us for whom Spring (rightly!) starts on the 1st of February, and Happy Birthday, if you have celebrated any or all of these events since our last report.
This report comes to you slightly delayed due to an unforseen issue, which we have now resolved!
I have attached a lovely update below about how your support has helped us to grow and sustain HSR from September 2021 to January 2022. As is normal with the context we are working in, some of the details in the report already need further updates, which I present to you now!
Cash cards
Thankfully, people in the asylum process in Greek refugee camps have been reissued with cash cards, having been without any money for over 3 months. However, the long food lines remain, and have been used as the reason that the financial support (previously approximately €150 per month) provided through the cash cards has been slashed in half in most cases.
In addition to this, there are many people and families who have had their asylum cases accepted, but have been waiting in limbo for many months for their IDs and Refugee Passports to be issued. Once a case has been accepted, people are no longer eligible for any support - food, financial or otherwise.
This means that people are continuing to seek out employment which is insecure and underpaid.
Community Coordinator
The HSR Coordination team has been a two-person job up to now. Given our growth and plans for 2022, we are now recruiting for a Community Coordinator. This will be someone from the refugee and asylum seeking community. Being a community-led project has thus far meant listening to the needs of the community, providing activities which are demanded, through the expertise of community teachers. However, it is so important to us that we continue to always improve on exemplifying our values through action. Recruiting a Community Coordinator is just one of these actions, and we are really excited to have someone with new expertise and experience join our team.
Expansion - The Moveable Gym project
We have begun offering sports activities in Ioannina, as well as in Habibi.Works in Katsikas. The majority of refugees living in the city are unaccompanied minors. Some live in accomodation in the city, while others are housed in remote locations on the outskirts of the city, with very little public transport options. Given this, we are now searching for funding to start our Moveable Gym project. This project is basically a van which is kitted out with gym equipment in the back, meaning we can bring the gym to people in remote locations, who cannot access our regular classes. If you have any interest in supporting this project, or know someone that does!
We just keep going!
In between all this, we had a women only climbing competition, an Under 15s Football Competition and we took part in the Virtual Marathon of Afghanistan.
We have also lost some structural funding from some big actors who have pulled out of Greece due to a lack of income in 2021. This means that your support means more than ever, and is allowing us to continue growing and moving. Thank you so much!
Please, if you are not already, consider following us on Instagram and liking us on Facebook. If you are following us, consider sharing our page and telling your friends and family about the project, to help us grow our network. If you would like to keep up to date with all of our activities, please sign up to our monthly newsletter here!
We are #StrongerTogether !
From,
Maeve, Marta & all at HSR
Partnership
This month is an exciting one for Habibi and Sport with Refugees. We have formalised and launched our official project partnerships with Yoga and Sport with Refugees, Habibi.Works and KOIZ Centre for Postcolonial Studies.
We are based on-site at Habibi.Works, an intercultural maker space in Katsikas, Greece. Habibi.Works provides a platform for education, empowerment and encounters for refugees and Greek locals in the North of Greece! The connections made in this space, and the support of members of KOIZ who were based at Habibi.Works for some months, fostered the growth of a small ad-hoc sports group, which has grown into the powerful community of athletes, teachers and friends that Habibi and Sport with Refugees is today. This growth has also been aided by the support of Yoga and Sport with Refugees, an incredible organisation which also has locations in Athens and Lesvos. Each of these partners came on board in quite an organic way, and each plays a vital role in increasing the impact and sustainability of the project.
We now have two full time coordinators, Maeve and Kirstine on the ground in Katsikas, working with teachers, assistants and students from the refugee and Greek community in Katsikas, the nearby city of Ioannina and surrounding areas. Maeve has a degree in International Development and has worked in the humanitarian and NGO sector in Ireland, Sierra Leone and Nepal. Kirstine has been working on sports projects with refugees in Lebanon and Greece, as well as coordinating the laundry service in the new refugee camp in Lesvos after the fire in Moria last year. Both are passionate sportswomen and are highly motivated to facilitate the success of Habibi and Sport with Refugees.
Future Plans
We are so grateful to you for trusting us and donating to our project. This Autumn, we will use money raised to winter-proof our climbing wall and gym so it can be used all year round; improve access to sport for women and girls; increase and improve our equipment for volleyball, football and running; support our teachers with upskilling and training opportunities.
Please follow us on Instagram @habibiandsportwithrefugees to keep up to date with all of our activities. We would really appreciate it if you could share our project with your network to ensure that we can continue to provide sustainable and high quality activities for all of our participants.
Thank you for all your support, we are #StrongerTogether
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