Greece

“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”

Since 2016 Hope and Aid Direct have been working in Greece to support the refugees who have crossed the Aegean Sea.

Each year, two convoys of vehicles have left the UK and travelled across Europe to deliver aid to those people who really our need help.

We have delivered over 230 tonnes of tents, sleeping bags, nappies, hygiene items and much more over those years. We have built strong relationships with several NGO’s on the islands and have supplied aid to support their projects.  in 2020, one of our volunteers spent most of the year on the Greek island of Samos setting up a new aid warehouse following a major fire. 

On each trip Hope and Aid Direct volunteers have flown out to meet the vehicles on arrival in mainland Greece or on the islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios where the majority of refugees reside in squalid conditions. 

At the peak of the crisis in August 2020 more than 40,000 men, women and children lived in those dreadful camps.  Contrary to many reports, the refugees are not all young men, around 50% of the camp population are women and children. 

No one will ever know how many refugees lost their lives crossing the Aegean Sea in unsafe boats. The majority were escaping war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq and had hoped to find a safe place to work and live in the EU. Sadly, they found only poverty, cruelty and bureaucracy designed to return them to the places they were escaping from. 

Whilst we were working in Greece we met a talented young photographer Yousif Al Shewaili who put together a photo series which he created for Hope and Aid Direct. Yousif's photos tell the stories of people living in Moria refugee camp, on the island of Lesvos in Greece.

You can see all his photos here