ERASMUS+ KA2 “Refugees welcome-when numbers become faces”. Organising social volunteering activities for forced immigrants. Action 3. To collect and donate food and other supplies for Refugees, in Collaboration with ARSIS, Association for the Social Support of Youth

For our  Erasmus + Project Refugees Wercome- When numbers become faces  the Greek team decided to take action, in order to help the local refugee community. We did many things, from a tournament with refugees to events to sensitize students, one of which was to collect food and other supplies for refugees.

We started by communicating with many organizations, which operate in our area in the field of  refugee support. Finally  Estia Prosfygon Arsis, in englisch: Refugee Shelter for Families http://www.arsis.gr/en/home/ was willing to collaborate with us. We decided to contribute to their projects by initiating a campaign in our school in order to sensitize our fellow students. Our goal was to purchase, collect and donate as many supplies as possible.

As soon as we made a list with the recommended items, we created a leaflet, in order create an awareness campaign. 

Our headmistress, Mrs Tsikiza,  helped us also to inform the community of our school. Every day each class president reported about the progress of our action.

The difficult part of this action, was that students and people in general are not always willing to help people in need, people, who have problems because something bad happened to their lives, which forced them to  immigrate in another country leaving their families and their jobs. Unfortunately, a lot of people nowadays are numb as they just thing of  their own well-being,  without caring about the problems other people may face.

However, we overcame this difficulty and collected a great amount of supplies to donate to the organization. In this way we achieved our real goal which was, to sensitize students to bring whatever they could to help others. We made them to be deprived of something such as rice or a small amount of money so they can make someone’s day a little brighter.

After all we invited  the people from ‘Arsis’ to pick them up. We hope we have contributed to their  task. We are glad, they sent us a letter inviting us to meet them personally.

The most important thing in life is to help each other and leave differences beside in order to live a perfect and harmonic life. In this way we would have achieved the best thing our world could have, which is to be teammates and not enemies in a very difficult game called life.