The Story of Pads 4 Refugees: An Organization Close to LHI's Heart

by Hannah Baron, LHI Volunteer

Melissa facilitated psychosocial activities at the Female Friendly Space during her time at the LHI Community Center in Serres, Greece.

Melissa began her journey in the world of humanitarian aid as a volunteer at LHI’s Female Friendly Space (FFS) in Serres, Greece. Today, she’s the CEO and founder of her own aid organization, Pads 4 Refugees, which does exactly what its name suggests: provide pads for refugee women. She regularly distributes pads to refugees and asylum-seekers in Washington D.C. and in Los Angeles, California, and has made distributions all over the world, including in Ukraine, Gaza, Uganda, Venezuela, Mexico, Syria, Turkey, Israel, and Pakistan.

After getting her second law degree in International Human Rights law at Northwestern, Melissa struggled to find a job or an internship she felt passionate about. 

A friend suggested that she volunteer at LHI’s Community Center in Serres, Greece which at the time was populated almost entirely with Yazidi refugees. As it turned out, Melissa had written a lot about the Yazidi refugee crisis in school. Everything clicked into place. She decided to volunteer at the refugee center’s Female Friendly Space.

Upon arriving in Serres, Melissa was all nerves. She didn’t know exactly what to expect.

“And then it just seemed like–I think this is probably what everyone says–it just seemed like a really warm, welcoming place. I just instantly was glad I was there,” she said.

Melissa soon realized how important a supportive Female Friendly Space was for the women who gathered there. “They were all carrying trauma from the genocide that had happened to them, or what had happened to their families, and the idea was really just to give them a break from all that and to have a peaceful space where they could relax,” she said.

Women at the Female Friendly Space participate in a workshop preparing them to potentially work in a salon.

 At the Female Friendly Space, Melissa helped clean, run the social media accounts, and organize various activities like spa days, crochet circles, and movie nights.

“These women were carrying these hard burdens and they’re waiting to see if their asylum claims are getting met, but I just really enjoyed going in there and doing activities with them and getting to know them,” she remembered.

Melissa also learned that women got their period products at the Female Friendly Space. Each month she helped distribute period products to the women at FFS. The quality of pads the women received was not great, but with around 600 women and teenagers in need, even purchasing off-brand pads was very expensive. She thought about how helpful it would be to find someone willing to donate pads, so LHI’s funds could be redistributed towards other pressing needs, such as fixing a broken sewing machine.

When she came home from Serres, Melissa continued to have trouble finding work in her field. With all her free time, she wondered whether refugees outside of Greece  also struggled to find period products.

As it turned out, this was a problem everywhere. Even the major refugee aid organizations, like the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, rarely handed out pads, and families struggled to find the funds to buy them on their own. When funds are limited, most women tend to choose food for their family or diapers for their babies over period products, Melissa explained. Therefore, aid organizations are more likely to prioritize those necessities.

Her idea was to lessen the burden for  organizations like LHI that do provide period products by paying for the pads. 

“I thought, ‘I can’t find a job, I'll just make up my own job. And it’ll be CEO of a non-profit,” she said. “And I didn’t expect to get enough money to pay me a salary, but it was something to do.”

Pads 4 Refugees has enabled the LHI Community Center in Serres, Greece to purchase high quality, name brand menstrual pads like those pictured here. Women are able to receive a package of pads each month at the Female Friendly Space.

Melissa started Pads 4 Refugees. It took about six months for her to raise enough money for LHI to be able to upgrade to high-quality, name-brand pads. Then, a group on another Greek island reached out to her, asking if she could help them provide women with pads as well. She could.

Melissa working on a pad distribution with MAM Beyond Borders, an NGO that LHI partners with to provide reproductive and sexual health seminars for women at the Female Friendly Space at the LHI Community Center in Serres.

To this day, Melissa says that she’s never reached out to any organizations asking if they need her help; they come to her. The humanitarian world is small, and words gets around.

Her biggest challenge is finding donors and raising money to meet everyone’s needs.

“I now have regular distributions with so many orgs in Greece and this one in Lebanon, and I just feel very obligated to keep it going. These women don’t have a lot of money to buy the basic things they need,” she said. “It’s not easy but I just think it’s the right thing to do, and no one else was really doing it at the time.”

Melissa’s next goal for Pads 4 Refugees is to boost her regular distribution in Lebanon so that the women there can use disposable pads all year round, rather than the reusable ones they often have to resort to now. To accomplish this, she has to stop expanding and start raising more money.

She says the easiest thing people can do to make a positive difference in refugees’ lives is sharing social media posts from aid organizations like hers that are looking for funding. You can also give, even if it’s just a few dollars. She stresses that you don’t have to give big to be a big help.

“I have several donors who donate monthly, and they donate five dollars, which people think is not a lot and it doesn’t make a difference, but…it actually does help. I’ve had donations that are like two dollars, but it just adds up,” she said.

Thank you Melissa for sharing your story with us! Pads 4 Refugees helps LHI supply women at the Female Friendly Space in Serres with period products, and helped us provide period products to women in Gaza. If you are looking to expand the number of organizations you support, we recommend Melissa and Pads 4 Refugees to you!

LHI Looks Back on 2023

by Brigid Rowlings, LHI Communications Director

LHI’s COO Walker, Director of Monitoring and Evaluation Jaron, and Founder and Director Hayley distributed aid to survivors of the earthquakes that devastated Turkey and Syria in February.

Looking back over the past year, we cannot believe all you have helped us to do! Here are the highlights!

The LHI Community Center in Serres, Greece

LHI’s Director of Monitoring and Evaluation Jaron and founder of our Utah programs Carlissa lent some elbow grease to improvement projects at the LHI Community Center in Serres.

It was a year of continued growth and innovation at the LHI Community Center, which is located near two refugee camps in Serres, Greece. The LHI Greece team was thrilled to receive new computers for the education program and new shelving for the community center’s aid warehouse. After talking with the women who attend programs at the Female Friendly Space, the team also adjusted the way we distribute clothing, school supplies, baby items and other aid. Instead of handing out parcels, the team instead created “free shops” where beneficiaries can select their own items. This small change not only provides people with a sense of dignity, but also brings a lot of excitement and joy.

The LHI Greece team set up a free shop where parents could shop for baby items including these handmade teddy bears.

utah programs

LHI team members and volunteers loaded this container of aid for Jordan in October.

Our Utah team prepared and shipped 18 containers of material aid to places like Bangladesh, where thousands of Rohingya refugees living in a large refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar were impacted by a fire in March, Afghanistan, where 6.6 million people have been internally displaced by conflict and natural disasters, and Gaza, where over 80% of the population has been displaced. The team also sent 7 shipments to the US/Mexico border to help shelters there provide warm clothing, hygiene products, and baby kits to migrants.

The US Office for Refugee Resettlement provides local resettlement agencies with a list of items that must be in apartments of resettled refugees. If the items aren't donated, they must be purchased from the family's small stipend. LHI's Utah team relies on donations from you to keep our warehouse stocked so that we can provide all the items resettled refugees need!

The Welcome Program has grown so much that we had to expand our warehouse! So far this year, LHI volunteers have set up 285 apartments for refugees resettling in Utah. And, in addition to our long-standing partnerships with the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Community Services, LHI is now working with Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection to make sure that resettled refugees in Logan, Utah come home to an apartment furnished with everything they need.

ukraine

The battery powered incubators you helped us provide put to good use at Bashtanka Hospital in Mykolaiv, Ukraine.

Last year, we asked you to help us get Ukrainians through a cold and uncertain winter and you responded! We were able to provide generators, battery powered infant incubators, sleeping bags and long underwear throughout Ukraine. Our teams in Ukraine have also been able to get consistent material, medical and psychological aid to frontline communities all year long.

LHI's Ukraine country director Serhii (center) organized LHI's response to the dam collapse, including finding this truck which pumped thousands of tons of water out of homes and businesses.

When the Kakhovka Dam in Kherson province ruptured in June, our teams responded not only by helping those displaced from their homes, but also by pumping thousands of tons of water out of homes and businesses. 

Moldova

Participants in the Story Time Project performed some of the Ukranian folk tales they had read for family and friends!

Looking back on all the work our Moldova team has done with Ukrainian refugees, it is hard to believe that our community center in Balti and our Storytime Project are not even a year old! Both programs provide social emotional support activities for participants and keep Ukrainian language and culture alive.

Children at the LHI Community Center in Balti participate in a yoga class, part of the social emotional supports offered to Ukrainian refugees.

jordan

LHI Founder and Director Hayley Smith toured one of the modular classrooms LHI was able to build for Syrian refugee children in Jordan.

In Jordan, it’s all about kids and kids! The first set of kids are the Syrian refugee children who have benefitted from the 3 modular classrooms we built this year. Because Jordanian schools are already at capacity, building classrooms means that Syrian children can attend school. 

This family turned the 2 milk goats they received from LHI into a herd of 25 in just 2 years!

The second set of kids are the 1,200 Shami milk goats we have distributed to Syrian refugee families. The families who benefited had been goat herders in Syria, but had to leave their herds behind when they fled civil war. Having milk goats allows these families to improve their family’s nutrition and move towards self-sufficiency as they sell milk and grow their herd. One family we visited this year had turned the two milk goats they received two years ago into 25! The income they earned from goat milk and goat products allowed them to leave the refugee camp and rent a home. 

emergency response

LHI's COO Walker distributed aid to an earthquake survivor in Turkey.

LHI specializes in responding to emergency situations quickly, talking to the people impacted, and finding out what they most need. In February, we were able to assist both Turkish and Syrian people impacted by earthquakes by providing medical and psychological first aid, hygiene kits, and food packages. 

LHI responded to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza quickly, finding partners on the ground to help us source aid and get it to civilians who need it in Gaza.

In October, we arrived in Egypt and got right to work finding the right partners to help us get aid to the over one million people displaced in the Gaza Strip. We established a partnership with the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) who helped us get food and medicine into Gaza.

We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You!

Whether you are an LHI volunteer or a donor, whether you’ve tied blankets or assembled hygiene kits for a service project, or whether you are a partner or a grant provider, you are a part of our team. Thank you for your support this year. We look forward to working together again in 2024 to meet needs around the world. No politics. Simply humanitarian.

Travel Journal: Full Circle in Serres, Greece

By Carlissa Larsen, Founder and consultant of the LHI Utah Programs

On her recent trip to the LHI Refugee Community Center in Serres, Greece, Carlissa was recruited by Jaron, LHI's Director of Monitoring and Evaluation, to construct a space for the professional development program!

Carlissa Larsen has been with LHI for 7 years. She started as a volunteer and founded the Utah programs. She worked as co-director for Utah operations, and is now a consultant for our Utah programs. She recently traveled to Jordan and Greece to see the impact of LHI’s work on the ground for the first time!

SO THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AID FROM UTAH IS UNBOXED!

For years, I helped gather, organize, and load shipping containers of humanitarian aid for LHI in Utah. With every shipment that we sent we would receive photos of that aid being distributed in places like Jordan, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Somalia, Greece and other locations around the world. But I’d wanted to see the impact of the work we do in Utah in real time on the ground. So I was super excited to help with a distribution at the LHI Refugee Community Center in Serres, Greece!

LHI Greece team members set up a free shop for parents and children to shop for toys, clothes, and baby supplies.

We also distributed food and feminine hygiene pads.

SEWING AND SPA DAY AT THE FEMALE FRIENDLY SPACE

The sewing machines are enjoying a short rest before they go back to work!

The Female Friendly Space offers a variety of crafting and self-care activities. Visiting groups occasionally lead workshops on female health and healing from trauma.

This is the Female Friendly Space (FFS) at our refugee center in Serres. Women who come to the FFS use these sewing machines everyday to mend or hem their clothing. There is also a corner for women to sit and knit or crochet. In addition to sewing, knitting, and crocheting, the FFS offers different activities provided everyday.

Who wore it best nail polish edition!

I hate having my fingernails polished, but when a 13 year old Yazidi refugee came in and motioned for me to come sit next to her so she could paint my fingernails, I let her paint my fingernails! It struck me that on the other side of the world, my 11 year old daughter was also participating in an activity with other young women where they were painting their fingernails. In so many ways, people are the same, no matter where they are or what their circumstances might be. We are separated only by lines drawn on a map.

Thank you Carlissa for sharing your visit to the LHI Refugee Community Center in Serres, Greece with us! To learn more about LHI’s program in Greece, click here!

How Stuff Works: Building Community Centers in Greece and Moldova

by Brigid Rowlings, LHI Communications Director

Like these shoes we distributed to beneficiaries at the LHI Community Center in Serres, Greece, one size does not fit all when it comes to humanitarian work.

Refugee work does not lend itself to a one-size-fits-all solution. With 110 million refugees and internally displaced people around the world, aid organizations, both smaller groups like LHI and larger organizations like the UNHCR, must consider a wide range of factors when responding to the needs of refugees. For example: What is the political climate in the country hosting refugees? Are refugees allowed to attend school or work in the host country? Do refugees have access to traditional housing, or are they relegated to refugee camps? What governing body is responsible for managing refugee issues? What is the best way to work with these organizations?

Over the next few weeks, we will provide some insight into how LHI responds to different refugee situations. 

A TALE OF TWO REFUGEE COMMUNITY CENTERS

We founded the LHI Community Center in Greece in August, 2016. Our primary goal was to provide refugees a sense of community, a shared sense of belonging and understanding. Situated adjacent to two refugee camps in Serres, Greece, it is a place that brings people and cultures together through shared ownership of the space and its activities. 

At the LHI Community Center in Serres, Greece, community members and volunteers often share food and traditions from their home countries with each other as a way to connect and build community across cultures.

Earlier this year, we officially opened a similar program for Ukrainian refugees living in Moldova. The goals of both community centers are the same (providing healing psychosocial and material support to refugees), but their contexts are very different. 

Children enjoy an art project at the LHI Community Center in Balti, Moldova.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCES

Let’s start with Greece. Geographically, Greece is the gateway to Europe when coming from the East. It is a long and dangerous journey for refugees, many of whom cannot return home. However, once in Greece, asylum cases can take years to process, and the government provides little financial support. Refugees cannot work, and refugee camps can be crowded. Anti-refugee prejudice is present, and international aid organizations are not entirely welcome. 

Now, on to Moldova. Moldova shares a 700 mile border with Ukraine, so it is a natural destination for those fleeing Ukraine. Unlike in Greece, there are no refugee camps in Moldova; instead, Ukrainian refugees live within the local communities, occupying family homes, rented apartments, or designated shelters. The Moldovan government has generally been welcoming to refugees from Ukraine, allowing them to work and have a more secure legal status than in Greece. Ukrainian refugees still hope to return to their home country when it's safe enough to do so. 

It’s worth noting that Moldova has struggled with poverty for decades, and in some cases, Ukrainian refugees get more financial and material help than native Moldovans. While this has resulted in occasional tensions, the majority of Moldovans remain welcoming and hospitable to Ukrainians. 

SIMILAR GOALS, DIFFERENT CONTEXT

GREECE

The refugee camps in Serres, Greece, house people from various nationalities and who speak different languages such as Yazidis, Ukrainians, Syrians, and Afghanis. At the LHI Community Center, we strive to create a safe and welcoming environment where everyone can feel a sense of community, regardless of their origin. We organize activities where participants can share their cultures, traditions, and food with each other. We also encourage sports, women’s activities, children’s activities, play, fun, and music as a means of bringing people together.

People often enjoy making music together at the Arts and Recreation space at the LHI Community Center in Greece.

Because the political climate in Greece can be hostile towards refugees and aid organizations, we run the LHI Community Center independently from the government-appointed administration and refugee camps. We regularly consult with the refugee community to ensure our programs meet their needs and interests, especially if they do not have access to services in the host country. For instance, as many community members are scheduled to resettle in Germany, German language classes are in high demand.

MOLDOVA

At the LHI Community Center in Balti, both Ukrainians and local Moldovans come together as part of our mission to foster community and help those most in need.

While beneficiaries in Moldova do not live in refugee camps, we try to identify those who may feel isolated and lonely in the local community. We use a lot of social media and word of mouth to let beneficiaries know about our center.

Because Ukrainians living in Moldova do hope to return home someday, and because many Ukrainians are able to work in Moldova, there is not as much of a demand for language or skills building classes as there is in Greece. There is however a huge demand for fitness and creative arts classes, both of which lend healing and comfort to those who wait in limbo to return to Ukraine.

These community members enjoy a fitness class at the LHI Community Center in Moldova.

And so there you have it. Despite the differences between the refugee contexts in Greece and Moldova, LHI was able to take a good idea—a refugee community center—and customize it to meet the needs of the place and the people it benefits.

Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post where we talk about how responding to one natural disaster that affected two different countries and required two very different responses.

When LHI Was Just A Sparkle in Hayley Smith's Eye

by Hayley Smith, LHI Founder and Director

History is made as my family and friends help load the first container of LHI humanitarian aid!

“But nonprofits don’t pay very well!” Those are my mom’s [concerned] words when I told her I was starting Lifting Hands International. And she wasn’t wrong. I reassured her that it would be a small project on the side because, well, I was just one person, and I majored in English and minored in Arabic. No shred of business training in my entire existence. 

That mother/daughter exchange was around this time of year 7 years ago. I’d recently gotten back from a stint as a volunteer in Greece, and I was fired up about what I’d witnessed. My mind wouldn’t stop churning with flashbacks of refugees, soaking from being in the sea and shaking in the cold. I had to do something.

It is hard to believe that LHI’s first aid warehouse was my living room!

So, I filled out the required paperwork, paid the fees, and started a nonprofit. I had a year to find a board and write bylaws, so I put that off for a while. In the meantime, my goal? To fill one container of aid per year, and aid that refugees actually need, not what people assume they need. It wasn’t an ambitious business plan by any means, but one container of organized boxes of critical aid is certainly better than nothing. 

Well, we filled that container in two months, and I thought that was the biggest project LHI would ever do! But LHI just kept growing and growing and growing into the international org it is today! Thank you to our volunteers, supporters, donors, staff, and teams for helping to build Lifting Hands International over the last 7 years.

LHI Builds a Pergola at the Community Center in Serres, Greece

by: Brigid Rowlings, LHI’s Communications Director with Coline, Director of Logistics and Distributions at the LHI Community Center

Volunteers build a pergola at the LHI Community Center. The pergola now houses the Community Center’s Arts and Recreation programs.

When is a pergola not just a pergola? When it is built at the LHI Community Center in Serres, Greece! 

When the LHI Community Center’s Arts and Recreation program reopened in the wake of the Covid pandemic, it got busy quickly! Staff and volunteers realized that the program was so popular, it needed its own space, and, given the heat of Greek summers, one with some shade. A pergola seemed the ideal solution.

Fortunately, Jaron, LHI’s Director of Monitoring and Evaluation, and at least a jack of the pergola-building trade, was headed to the LHI Community Center for a visit. Impressively, Jaron and a team of volunteers including both our visiting volunteers and community volunteers (people who use Community Center services) built the entire pergola in just five days. Even more impressive was the impact the project had on many of the LHI Community Center beneficiaries.

The pergola project drew people to the LHI Community Center, some for the first time. Some people took a moment to contribute to the work by holding a ladder or carrying some wood.

For one young Yazidi woman, the pergola helped her find her “thing.” This young woman is a regular at the LHI Community Center, but Coline, one of our visiting volunteers, had struggled to engage her in activities that appeal to many other teenage girls. Coline tried to get her to come to spa day, and the young woman replied, “You know that isn’t my thing.” Inspiration hit Coline, and she told the young woman, “Come with me!”

Coline led her to the pergola construction site and they asked how she could help. One of the builders handed the young woman a drill and showed her how to use it. Her eyes lit up. Now THIS was her “thing.” The young woman spent the rest of the day joyfully installing the pergola’s floorboards.

Once this young woman mastered the art of the drill, there was no stopping her!

When is a pergola not just a pergola? When it brings a community together. When it provides space for people far from home to create and play. When it gives a young woman a passion, a purpose, and a sense of pride. 

LHI Refugee Center in Greece: Library Expansion!

by: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director

How does a collection of books in Persian, Greek, English, Arabic, German (and more!) pop up in the small northern town of Serres, Greece? We're here to tell you!

Come in and spend some time at the LHI Refugee Center library!

Some Background

Back when we established the LHI Refugee Center in 2016, we had a basket of books that were available to check out. As both our center and also book collection grew, we were able to establish what is now an airy, welcoming space just for the library.

The children’s section is adorable!

It's an impressive operation! The library is a fully cataloged, circulating collection! All of the books are labeled and organized into categories and languages. There's even an adorable children's book section.

The best part is, any resident from the camp can come check out a book!

Books are now available in Persian, Greek, English, Arabic, German, and more!

An Exciting Development

The two camps we work with recently transitioned from Yazidi-only to a mixed population, with most newcomers being Afghans. We needed Persian books for our library, and fast! So our team on the ground put their heads together and made a plan.

They reached out to an Italian organization called Negah, who then put out a call for Persian books. They brought in an incredible number of books from their supporters.

Edu, our education manager (who speaks Farsi!) also reached out to friends. Some books came from a teacher in Finland, others from a bookstore in Geneva, others from Hamburg, from Iran, and from the US.

And a really amazing donation was 10 signed copies of “The Last Girl” from Nadia's Initiative, an org that advocates for survivors of sexual violence and aims to rebuild communities in crisis. 

The library now contains several signed copies of “Last Girl!”

In total we've collected more than 400 books in Persian, coming from France, USA, Iran, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, and Italy.

The library at the LHI Refugee Center came about the same way all of our projects do: NETWORKING! Thank you to our team, donors and partner orgs for making this development possible!

Click here to learn more about the programs at our Refugee Center in Greece.

AN UPDATE FROM HAYLEY: ON THE GROUND IN SERRES, GREECE

Hayley Smith, founder/director of LHI, is on the ground at the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece. Here’s her latest report:

Hayley is on the ground helping out at “the field” in Serres, Greece.

Yesterday’s afternoon shift at “the field” was absolutely wonderful (“the field” is what everyone in Greece calls the LHI Refugee Center, learn why here). These 3-hour shifts, which provide additional support since our teachers and volunteers are otherwise engaged, allow for sitting and chatting with the Yazidi residents of the nearby camps—albeit from a distance and through a mask—who are waiting for their classes to start or just come to take a breather from the camps for a while. 

Even though the current heat wave drains me of any energy (and sometimes my will to live), it is an automatic conversation topic. Over the years, we volunteers have learned how to say “galaki gherma”, which means “It’s sooo hot” in Kurmanji. In turn, the camp residents already know how to say “air conditioner” in English. Our solar-powered AC system is, after all, the most essential part of our spaces in the summer (well, 3 out of our 4 spaces. We’re still trying to find funding for the 4th). 

Conversations often go far beyond the weather, opening our respective windows to other cultures and perspectives. I just wish that you could magically appear here and have a chat with the Yazidis! But since you can’t be here, here are some snippets from some of these chats:

1. Chatting with a Fifteen year-old boy, who melted my heart:

Me: “How did you learn such good English?”
Kid: “Here. And my first German class is tomorrow.”

(By the way, his whole family takes classes from us!)

The three boys who helped Hayley weed the garden beds.

2. Three kids, two of whom have special needs, insisting on helping me pull weeds:

“We help you,” or “Look, teacher, look!” when they pull out really big weeds. “Eat!” when they bring back ripe figs from nearby fig trees. 

3. Murad, an older man who runs our community vegetable garden:

“Stop, stop! It’s better to weed at 6 or 7. It’s too hot. Sit in the shade.”

He wasn’t wrong. Side note: He speaks to me in Arabic, which I LOVE! 

Kids enjoy painting and getting messy in the Child-Friendly Space in Serres, Greece.

Government restrictions have temporarily reduced the overall number of refugees who benefit from our services on a daily basis, but the energy that comes from learning and empowerment is still palpable. Not only that, but our Yazidi resident volunteers more than make up for low international volunteer numbers in a beautiful way; our remote learning program also allows people to learn and do healing activities from their caravans in the camp; and despite the mandatory face masks, the eyes will always show when people are smiling!

Click here to learn more about our Refugee Center in Serres, Greece.

WE KEEP GOING: PART 10

Quarantined… in Greece!

by: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director

The balcony view is so beautiful!

Hayley here, reporting from Serres, Greece. After one failed attempt at getting into the EU a few weeks ago, I’m certainly glad to be sitting here on the balcony of LHI team apartment 1 writing to you. Navigating the tricky EU ban on US citizens wasn’t easy, even with invoking the humanitarian exception to the ban. But here we are on day #3 of team quarantine!

Last night’s dinner on the balcony.

There are six of us in this quarantine set. We’ve got Iñigo from the Basque country Spain, Natalie from the Netherlands, Maddie from England, Jana from Germany, and Katie from Scotland. Apart from borrowing a bread pan from a distance, we’ve had zero contact with the team currently on the ground, let alone anyone else in Serres, in order to prevent the potential spread of COVID-19. It’s not easy for some of our team members to be in Greece and not be nursing an iced coffee! 

You may suspect that I’m writing this post simply out of boredom, since 5 other volunteers and I have 11 more days of quarantine. But trust me, we are all excited to be here and tell you all about it, especially after months of lockdown. I’m even waiting to eat Iñigo’s homemade Spanish tortilla while writing this. (Spanish tortillas are baked omelettes with potatoes, and in Inigo’s recipe, onions). 

Luckily, LHI tends to attract some of the nicest and smartest people in the world, so quarantine has been painless and pleasant. We take turns cooking for each other, play lots of card games, spend time soaking our feet in the river park (where there are very few people), and talk. We’ve tackled subjects anywhere from cooking to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Did I mention that it’s in the high-90s with high humidity and no air conditioning? 

Card games get us through the day. And working on this blog post…

As pleasant a group as this is, we are keeping our eye on the prize, which is finally getting to work on the ground with the Yazidi refugees who come to the LHI Refugee Center to learn, to teach and to heal. We are ready and waiting.

Our own experiences with lockdown have given many of us the opportunity to develop more empathy for those in more difficult circumstances, such as our refugee brothers and sisters throughout the world who have been experiencing such struggles for years: useless passports, being confined to one location, canceled life plans, and perhaps the hardest thing, uncertainty about the future. 

Jana (in the shorts) is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Natalie is not…

This being said, we can’t undermine our various struggles and suffering during this time. Whether we are in quarantine, managing restless kids doing online school, working on the front lines, living in refugee camps, etc., we’re all here for one another, and we will keep going!

Click here to learn more about our Refugee Center in Serres, Greece.

WE KEEP GOING: PART 9

We Keep Going Because They Keep Going

In the early hours of August 3, 2014, ISIS fighters flooded out of their bases in Syria and Iraq and swept across the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, home to the majority of the world’s Yazidis, a distinct religious community whose beliefs and practice span thousands of years. Within days of the attack, reports emerged of ISIS committing unimaginable atrocities against the Yazidi community. 

Many of the Yazidis who survived the ISIS attacks fled through Turkey to Greece.

A number of Yazidis that we work with in Serres, Greece were brave enough to share their stories with us. This is Guli’s story.

PART 1

Our village wasn’t attacked as early as other villages, so we had no idea what was happening. I was spending time with my children and their spouses at home, which was located near the hospital. Suddenly, we started seeing many injured people being brought there. One of my sons went to the hospital to find out what had happened. The injured people told him that everyone needs to flee because ISIS was coming. I told my son that we need to flee, too, but he was confident that the Peshmerga militia would save us. So we stayed put.

The next day, the city was almost empty, and our neighbors told us, “You need to flee, you need to flee.” They were saying that in other villages ISIS was separating people, killing men and taking women. My son said, “This can’t be happening,” so he took his gun and things to confront ISIS. My daughter said, “Are you crazy? Are you going to war? They beheaded all your friends, and they will behead you too.” But he was still focused, saying, “Things like this shouldn’t happen, I will go and fight.”

My son’s best friend called him when he was on his way to fight and said, “Are you stupid? Are you crazy? We are in the mountains right now. They are killing us. We saw how they beheaded people. Why are you still in the Sinjar area? You need to flee right now. They will do the same with you.” So my son came back.

By this time, it was 9:30 AM, and my mother said we needed to leave immediately. My son agreed. I said, “I told you.” He said, “They beheaded all my friends already.”

My son took off his military clothes, because he knew they would kill him right away and behead him. We had to wake up the children. They didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t even eat. I was like a crazy woman, waking them up, saying we needed to leave. We were the only ones still in the area. We heard that the roads leading out of Sinjar were completely blocked with thousands of people trying to flee. We didn’t even try to take our car. We had to leave on foot.

PART 2

After we fled our village, we saw the people coming from Sibur, the first place that was attacked, and they were covered in blood. They had broken arms. They didn’t have any shoes. They were hungry and thirsty. We were so exhausted already, but there were so many people crowded on the streets that there was no place to sit and rest.

There was a temple in the Sinjar area near where we lived, where we worshipped and where our relatives and ancestors of old were buried. Suddenly, it exploded right in front of us. They had already started to bomb our temples. 

We finally found a way out of the city through a tunnel, but people came out of the tunnel saying that there were ISIS soldiers waiting for us on the other side. So we went around it. We had to run to make it in time before being attacked. I had a water bottle with just this much [a few centimeters] in it , and my son told me, “You need to keep this with you. You’ve got just one kidney and high blood pressure, so you need to watch out.” My son’s son was just a young child, and he didn’t want to take any of my water. I saw how thirsty he was, but he didn’t want to ask me for any water. 

As we walked to the mountain, we passed a woman walking with her three young sons. I realized how thirsty her kids were, and I couldn’t watch anymore. I gave them my water. She said, “No, you need to take it.” I said, “No, it doesn’t matter. It’s like I’m fasting today, I won’t eat and drink today.” When she gave a little bit to one child, the other two went crazy with thirst. People also tried to help her by putting her children on their shoulders, and she tried to hold two of them as they went up the mountain.

We passed a city and thought we could stop and rest there, but then we saw people running away from it saying, “They took our women and young kids. We have to go to the to the mountains.” There was a woman who was scratching her face, it was bloody, and the man with her was crying. I asked, “Why are you crying? What happened?” They said, “They took our three daughters away from us.”

Photo: Washington Post

By the time we reached the mountain, our feet were bloody. The kids were crying, desperate for us to carry them, but we didn’t have any strength, we couldn’t hold them anymore. We reached a stagnant pool of water in the mountain. It was very dirty and full of diseases, but we had to drink it.

We stayed seven nights in the mountains of Sinjar, just trying to survive. All the time there were children crying and screaming. They didn’t have the words to describe how they were feeling. I didn’t know what to do.

PART 3

We finally crossed into Syrian Kurdistan. It was too hot to travel during the day, so it took two nights to get there. We were terrified. It was so hard for us to reach there. We suffered a great deal during that journey.

We waited for a week in Kurdistan and realized that we couldn’t stay there. There was nothing there. So we went straight to Turkey, where we lived in the mountains for four days. We were terrified that a wild animal would attack us or a snake would bite us. Some of the mountains were too high to walk over, so we had to walk around them. Some people died. Kids fell from rocks and died. The Turkish Peshmerga militia came with animals to carry old people and children, but sometimes people would fall off the animals and die, too.

We stayed in Turkey for a year and a half. We reached Greece on the 26th of August. My husband and one son who was injured are still in Turkey, and we are here. One of my daughter’s is still stranded in Iraq.

Yazidis have been spread around. Some are in Germany, some in Iraq, some in Turkey and some in Greece. Five daughters and two sons made it to Germany. One of my sons is married, and has five children there. Two of my daughters aren’t married, and three are. I have seven daughters and four sons all together. Most stayed in Turkey because we didn’t have the money to smuggle us all to Greece. I have my 18-year-old son and my 17-year-old daughter here with me. 

I wish you will share this and spread it the world, share it with everybody. Make a movie out of it, so they can see who we are and what we experienced, and so they can help us.

Click here to learn more about our Refugee Center that provides services to 1,100+ Yazidi refugees in Serres, Greece.

Photos by Shannon Ashton, story collected by Kate Hubrich, LHI volunteer in Serres.

WE KEEP GOING: PART 8

Reopening the Refugee Center in Serres, Greece

by: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director

It’s safe to say that we’ve learned from personal experience how important exercise, mindfulness, personal space, and self-care are during periods of lockdown.

The LHI Greece team modeling their masks.

It’s those very activities that refugees absolutely need to maintain mental and physical well-being during years of displacement and isolation. Ironically, while we were discovering the importance of soothing activities during lockdown, the Yazidis who normally participate in programs at the LHI Refugee Center in Greece had to go without when we temporarily shut down back in March.

Nico and Nick prepared “The Field” after four months of foliage growth.

This being said, we wanted to reopen the center as soon as humanly possible so that genocide victims could have access to structured activities, classes, and recreation away from the camp environment, which can be stifling and monotonous after months or years. 

However, the planning process for reopening the center during a pandemic is enough to scare most people away. Wedding or family reunion planning pale in comparison. It definitely would’ve been easier to just throw down our hands and give up. But, the mission of LHI is, afterall, to provide humanitarian aid to refugees. That means that we keep going, no matter what challenges arise.

So, after lots of planning, the center (lovingly called “The Field” by our beneficiaries) has reopened, an event we’ve been looking forward to for months! Let the healing and learning resume once again! 

Making Italian food from scratch during the 14-day quarantine.

So, what does it take exactly to keep our Yazidi beneficiaries safe from COVID-19? Short answer: a lot of planning. We want to give credit where credit is due. The director and leadership teams of LHI in Greece collectivity spent dozens and dozens of hours planning out every and any potential situation. No rock was left unturned. Some examples of this intense planning include the following results:

How detailed is this risk assessment? And it’s actually much longer than this…

• A 14-day quarantine for team members arriving in Greece, and quite a strict one at that

• Detailed risk assessment 

• A small capacity of people allowed in each space at any given time

• Mandatory face mask policy 

• Social distancing inside and outside spaces 

• No air conditioning, as per Greek requirements (think Greek summer plus tents = hot!)

• And so much more...

We don’t know what the future holds, but whatever happens, we are prepared to keep our beneficiaries safe from the virus. Whatever happens, we’ll keep going.

Click here to learn more about our work in Serres and support the LHI Refugee Center.

WE KEEP GOING: PART 7

Serres Beginnings: Moving Back In

by: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director

This post is a continuation of last week’s story about how LHI’s Refugee Center in Greece got started. To read the first part of the story, click here.

Isoboxes were a welcome upgrade in Serres Camp from the rustic tents with dirt floors.

In the summer of 2017 with Serres Camp all fixed up and ready to safely host refugees again, the Yazidis were moved back to the camp to get settled in their new isobox accommodations. Imagine the relief they felt that they no longer had to live in rustic tents with dirt floors that were totally open to the elements! 

But before we had time to celebrate the new camp, a new obstacle came up: Greece announced a new law prohibiting hundreds of non-UN nonprofits like LHI from entering dozens of camps all over the country. UN affiliates were to manage camps in close collaboration with Greece, and small, grassroots groups were no longer welcome inside. This was a difficult time for many groups around the country, and many were forced to give up and leave. But leaving was the last thing we wanted to consider.

LHI’s classes and distributions continued in a public park after having to leave the camp.

Suddenly we had nowhere to host our activities, but we were lucky enough to find an abandoned park as a temporary location for our classes. In the meantime, we searched the area for a building or land to rent for a more sustainable solution. Our search kept hitting obstacle after obstacle and lasted months rather than weeks. Despite a long walk in scorching heat, Yazidis kept showing up at the park for language and fitness classes, so we refused to give up our search. We kept going.

The field that would become LHI’s Refugee Center in Serres, Greece.

With the help of a few sympathetic locals, we managed to rent a parcel of land about 100 meters from the camp. It was uncultivated farmland and we were not allowed to build permanent structures. So we cleared it, leveled it, put down gravel, and built four large, high capacity, semi-permanent tent structures. We didn’t have access to the city’s electrical grid, so we installed solar panels. This is where we would run our language, fitness, and arts classes.

Yazidi children proudly display their flag at the 2018 grand opening of LHI’s Refugee Center.

In 2018, we unveiled the “field” as the new and permanent site of the LHI Refugee Center in Serres. The entire camp population walked down to celebrate the dedication in January. They knew they could trust us. They knew they could depend on us. They knew we would do what it takes to meet their needs, because we keep going.

Click here to learn more about our work in Serres and support the LHI Refugee Center.

WE KEEP GOING: PART 6

Serres Beginnings

by: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director

As we prepare to reopen the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece (with team members quarantining for two weeks first and lots of regulations in place to keep the Yazidi refugees safe from the virus), we are reminded of everything we had to go through to open it in the first place. We hit many roadblocks and overcame many obstacles. But our determination won out. We kept going. Here’s the story…

LHI Founder/Director Hayley Smith stands in an abandoned dinghy that likely carried 40–50 refugees across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece.

In 2016, an independent humanitarian couple came across a large group of Yazidi refugee families living in a field in northern Greece, with only sparse amounts of food and water and the clothing on their backs. The families were there for a number of complicated reasons and were soliciting the Greek government for safety. They are survivors of multiple horrors: the 2014 genocide; dangerous smuggling to safety in Turkey; terrifying trip across the Aegean in a flimsy dinghy to Greece; and then to top it off, persecution by those who ought to protect them the most. 

Molly and Kyle at the grand opening of the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece.

This couple, Molly and Kyle, would become the first directors of the LHI Northern Greece program when LHI funded water and fresh food for this large group of people. Since that humble start in 2016, we committed ourselves to following the Yazidi refugees wherever they went. And whatever the circumstances, if they weren’t going to give up, then neither were we. We kept going.

Eventually, they were settled in a camp in Serres, Greece. At first, we were only allowed to operate our distributions and language and yoga classes out of a tiny tent in an isolated corner of the camp. Conditions were far worse than ideal: the tent would flood, or the ground would get muddy. The living conditions were no better. No matter what, we kept going.

Before LHI’s Refugee Center opened, English was taught to Yazidis inside a small tent in a remote corner of the Serres camp.

At one point, they shut down the camp to clean it up and replace the tents with isobox container homes. The entire Yazidi population of the camp was moved to a city 75 kilometers away. We could have thrown in the towel, but instead we packed up our team, relocated with the refugees, and lived in a cramped motel for 3 months while we continued our classes and distributions. Despite the inconvenience, we kept going…

Next week, Hayley will continue the story about how the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece got its start. To read it now, click here.

Click here to learn more about our work in Serres and support the LHI Refugee Center.

WE KEEP GOING: PART 4

Repeat After Me: ana baHki shway arabi (I Speak a Little Arabic)

by: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director

It feels like my life is a series of feeble attempts to thank people for their incredible generosity: The sweet family that took a shy American student into their home in Fes, Morocco; every single donor who keeps LHI afloat; the many LHI volunteers and leadership team members who pour so much of their love and intelligence into our programs. The list goes on and on.

Hayley (top) teaches an online Arabic class for three LHI volunteers.

So, when the COVID-19 quarantine started in March, it seemed like a good time to offer remote Arabic classes to LHI volunteers, both past and present, as a way to thank them for their time spent at the LHI Refugee Center in Greece. Many had previously expressed interest in learning Arabic, since it is an especially helpful language to know in the humanitarian field.

15 students and two months later, our classes are still going strong, and the students are making amazing progress! 

Why Arabic?

Ever since I started learning Arabic at college (it was a toss up between Arabic, Gothic literature, and indoor volleyball: no-brainer), it has changed my life in ways I never could’ve anticipated. The most powerful way hands down is the unmatched hospitality and depth of friendship that the Arab culture is famous for. And being able to speak Arabic bridges a massive communication and cultural gap that can exist between humanitarians and beneficiaries. 

One reason LHI even exists is because of honest and open conversations I’ve had with Arabic-speaking refugees, who were able to express in their own words what they needed in order to survive (both physically and psychologically) years of living in a painful limbo. 

Classes

Hayley uses worksheets like this to help her students learn Arabic.

Since the beginning of April, I’ve been teaching 15 students divided between two classes of LHI volunteers. It’s a fast-paced course in both writing and speaking Levantine Arabic, the dialect widely spoken in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine. There aren’t a lot of resources for teaching this dialect, so it does require some lesson planning and creating accessible and fun audio resources. 

At the end of the day, the course is a good foundation on which to build in the future. It also has helped us all get through quarantine. Rosie, who has volunteered at the LHI Refugee Center, is taking the course: “No matter what people learn or take away from Arabic classes, the course gives me structure, a break from lockdown, a chance to see different faces, to train the brain, something to focus on, a purpose and sense of achieving something during lockdown.”

So, repeat after me: 

ana baHki shway arabi (I speak a little Arabic)

أنا بَحْكي شَوي عَرَبي. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of our “We Keep Going” blog series to learn more about how LHI continues our mission to help refugees at home and abroad in the midst of a global pandemic.

WE KEEP GOING: PART 2

LHI Refugee Center in Greece Goes Digital

In non-COVID-19 times, the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece, is a huge program with dozens of daily classes and activities providing healing and education for hundreds of Yazidi refugees. It normally takes a team of 25+ volunteers and program managers to keep it running.

And thanks to our team’s commitment to keep going, the psychosocial aspects of the program are still running remotely during the pandemic! From their lockdowns in Italy, UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Finland, the team started a Facebook Page to deliver a number of online classes and resources to the same Yazidi population that would normally attend classes in person.

Members of LHI’s Refugee Center leadership team made this video to share with the Yazidi population (with whom they normally work in person at the Center) at the beginning of the quarantine as an introduction to the online learning program. “Bashi” is hello in Kurmanji!

Some of the educational video titles available are shown in the screenshots below. I mean, wouldn’t you want to watch some?

Here’s more info about the LHI Educational Facebook Page: 

• Every program uploads 1-2 videos per week. 

• Videos are all created by LHI volunteers. That includes international and some resident Yazidi volunteers who live in the camps near the LHI Refugee Center!

• The Education program uploads 1 video per level per week (10 videos per week)

• Live question sessions for English language learning are held every Saturday

• Many of our previous volunteers are engaged in this new project

• This effort continues our engagement with the Yazidi community in Serres

Nick, Margaux, and Millie in LHI’s aid distribution warehouse. Serres, Greece.

While these efforts enable us to continue providing programming remotely, there’s one program that simply can’t be managed this way—food and hygiene supply distributions. We’re so grateful that 3 members of the leadership team (Nick, Margaux, and Millie) stayed in Greece to ensure that these aid distributions continue to happen. Thank you!