IRIDA-A Safe Space for 500 Refugee women in Greece

Dear Friend of the Irida Community,

From the bottom of our hearts, the Irida Family wishes you a Bright and Creative New Year full of health and prosperity. 

With this report, we would like to THANK YOU for your invaluable and generous support during 2021, embracing our mission and vision for just and gender-equal communities where refugee women and their children have the right to live their lives safely and with dignity. 

Your generosity, solidarity, and love came a long way. In 2021, thanks to your support, we managed to:

• provide on average 2.160 refugee, asylum-seeking, and migrant women with access to protection services, including provisions of food items, personal hygiene products, and baby necessities like diapers, baby formula, baby wipes, baby bath foams, purchase of medication, and access to decent healthcare, provision of information, and psycho-social support
• support members of our community to access their legal and social rights by serving on average 550 legal cases
• offer 240 language classes for English, Greek, and German, including Farsi literacy classes for community members who are illiterate in their native language
• implement 75 recreational activities -arts & crafts & sewing lessons- led by active community members who donate their time and skills.

Moving forward to 2022, we are setting new goals to tackle new challenges. Among our top priorities is to re-establish our child safe space to support mothers and children to process their traumas in a trauma-informed setting. At the moment, we have 155 community members - including 70 single women - who have at least one child from one to five years old and are the only caregivers in their families. 

To find out more about our child-safe space, you can click here

Thank you for your solidarity! Stay safe and healthy until our next report.

With love,

Lydia