The voting for the Best Initiative of the Year has been completed, with “WELCOMMON HOSTEL: We Offer Accommodation and Education for Refugees in Athens during COVID-19”, an initiative by Wind of Renewal, taking first place with 27.1% of the votes!
A few words about the initiative
Housing of vulnerable refugees during COVID-19- Education and empowerment
With the current situation in the camps and the streets of Athens and during COVID-19, it became vital to offer emergency and long-term accommodation for refugees, not only lessons. This is why we are open for collaboration and looking for resources, common projects and/or donations to finance this initiative. Therefore, during this new lockdown we are hosting 50 people from Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Palestine, Congo etc. Our objective is to find resources to host 60 to 80 people currently living in the street or in camps and support their return to society, focusing on vulnerable. Recenlty, we hosted the 51st newborn baby (and her family), and soon we will host the 52d one, since September 2016. We also help them with education, empoewerment and integration by providing educational and intercultural activities and job preparation even during COVID-19 and lockdown-2.
Our activities during COVID-19: The activities came to a complete stop during the Covid-19 lockdown-1 (March – May 2020) and restarted in limited capacity in June 2020 because of the small number of volunteers and lack of financial resources. Throughout the summer extra volunteers brought their enthusiasm and motivation to the project. From June to November 2020 (before the lockdown2) we offered the posibility to 110 refugees to participate in non-formal education, intercultural lessons.
Most of the participants in the courses are teenagers and women. Our activities during the lockdown-2: Since the 7th of November 2020, we had to cancel the courses for refugees from outside the hostel (camps and appartments) participating in the classes, because of the restrictions in mobility and of the health protocols. Our volunteers are re-organising the life in the hostel with activities, classes, daily chores, cleaning, etc... In the end, this lockdown is a good opportunity to get to know each other and to share our stories, our skills. We created a new schedule for the about 50-60 residents (refugees) of the Welcommon Hostel with different kinds of language classes (english, french, german, art) and projects for teenagers, children and adults! The children living in the hostel during COVID-19 and lockdown learn language, painting, maths with the help of our volunteers in the kids rooms! To make the best out of this lockdown and make it a productive time, the volunteers also organised all the resources that we have at the hostel to be able to be more efficient for the classes.
