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For the last year or so I've been working for an NGO that does healthcare work in Greece, Lebanon and Jordan (among others) focussing mainly on Syrian refugees and refugees of the conflict in Syria/refugees from ISIS in Iraq and the wider conflict area. Its probably going to be easy to find out which NGO I'm working for but I wont name it since it would be very easy to find my name etc, and I'd appreciate it if those who figure it out could let it remain a secret. I started working in coordination duties from my home country , then moved into working on the ground as I have a background in emergency healthcare (civilian paramedic, army medic) as a clinical lead and coordinating some community projects. I've been on the ground off and (mostly) on in Greece for about 8 months now, working in five different refugee camps with majority Syrian Arabs or Syrian Kurdish populations. One of our camps that got relocated to different areas around christmas was 100% Yazidi while the others are a mix of mostly Syrian/Iraqi Kurds and Arabs with a smattering of lebanese, afghanis and kuwaitis and more who were admitted into the asylum system for whatever reason. We provide medical clinics with volunteer doctors/nurses from all over the world who provide basic general medicine (General practitioner services basically) and referral services into the Greek healthcare system. We also see all emergencies that occur in the camps and as ambulances can take several hours to arrive we have started to have paramedics and EMT volunteers on hand to deal with this. A few facts about the refugee crisis in Greece off the top of my head: Almost all NGO activity here is volunteer based, although there are quite a few medical NGOs that have permanent staff on the ground (like me) in addition to volunteers. Our comparatively small NGO has between 20 and 30 doctors nurses and emergency personnel here at all times. There's about 60 000 official refugees in Greece right now, and most are not in camps but in hotels or apartment buildings throughout the country. This is changing somewhat as people who were moved into hotels for the winter are being moved back to camps as the hotel industry prepares for tourist season. Camps vary wildly in quality depending on who runs them and which NGO actors are in the area. I mainly work in Northern Greece and have worked in camps that were just clusters of tents with 7-10 people to a tent on the side of a mountain all the way to AC equipped containers where every family had a separate container to live in. I dont have official numbers on this but I would take a guess that easily 50% of the refugees are minors or were minors on arrival, and the majority of our patients are children. Theres not that many arrivals these days, nothing compared to last summer when boats would be coming from Turkey several times a day, but its picked up slightly the last few weeks. I haven't worked actively on the islands (lesvos chios etc) but I have been there a few times on assessment missions and have extensive contacts there so I could probably answer any general questions about those areas too. I am not qualified to answer questions on policies and refugee politics in the EU and the like, although I can of course offer my opinion. I can answer questions about volunteering in Greece, about life as an NGO worker and about living conditions and the life day to day of a refugee in a camp in Europe. If anyone has more experience, a different opinion or anything like that please feel free to chime in!
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Apr 15, 2017 11:21
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How do you become a volunteer? I've spent time on shorter-term medical missions in Uganda, I was a paramedic in the US for 2 years, but I would like to get into something longer term.
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Apr 17, 2017 05:18
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I'm very curious about the everyday life of the refugees. Is there work they do to stay busy? Is there schooling for the children? You mention most of your patients being children, what sort of differences in care are there between what they would receive in their home country vs the camps? General info would be great as well!
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Apr 17, 2017 08:18
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compshateme85 posted:How do you become a volunteer? I've spent time on shorter-term medical missions in Uganda, I was a paramedic in the US for 2 years, but I would like to get into something longer term. Sorry this took so long to get back, I've been up in Larissa for the Easter weekend and our accommodation wifi dropped out. Nobody fixes ANYTHING in Greece over easter. Anyway, it depends on what you want to do. Greece is quite a good place to get your feet wet kinda thing, as its still nominally a first world nation and there's lots of different independent volunteering one can do thats harder to do outside the West. Depending on where you want to go and what you want to do, I would research organizations in the specific area. For Medical work in Greece and beyond right now for non-doctors I would recommend you look into Docmobile. Its not my organization but I have close friends that are long term volunteers with them and they do amazing work with people who for one reason or another the big NGOs wont touch in Thessaloniki and on Lesvos. Their facebook page is a good way to get in touch, but they don't post too much about their Lesvos work where I think a paramedic would be more needed. Its a small German NGO but their coordinators on the ground at the moment are French and American. If you'd rather do something else, and God knows there's room for all kinds, like social work or English teaching I can point you to facebook groups or a few NGOs that do amazing work in Greece.
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Apr 17, 2017 20:47
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Munchables posted:I'm very curious about the everyday life of the refugees. Is there work they do to stay busy? Is there schooling for the children? You mention most of your patients being children, what sort of differences in care are there between what they would receive in their home country vs the camps? General info would be great as well! I have some pictures of the camps I wanted to go along with this post but I can't figure out how to upload a picture to my post on the Ipad. If I figure it out I'll add it in later. So, anyway, there's not really any set activities in a typical camp. It depends a little on which NGOs are operating in the area but in a typical camp you can't take anything like that for granted. Some camps are lucky and have organizations like Swisscross or Israaid come through and set up safe spaces for women, play areas for kids, English lessons for children and adults, etc. Other camps have nothing but tents or container homes, a clinic and a few bored policemen in a cordoned off area. A typical day for an adult refugee in the camps we work in would be: wake up late, 12-1, and have whatever lunch/breakfast is provided to your camp by a catering company hired by the government. They wake up late because as anyone who's been unemployed will tell you, when you have nothing to do all day you stay up late and your sleep schedule gets pushed back. After that, a lot of people go for walks or hang out in the camps. The camps are usually not closed off, and so the people are free to come and go, but with little or no money there's not much call for going to shops etc. Other than that people sit around and smoke shisha, gossip, drink tea and play soccer or use the super lovely free camp wifi to surf the web, Whatsapp or call friends and family who're either still home in Syria or who might have moved on into Europe through the relocation programs. Schooling for the kids is..... well its a huge problem. By law, apparantly, the kids are supposed to have schooling if they're in that age group but its complicated by Greek law demanding that anyone attending school has to be able to document vaccinations that are up to date by the Greek schedule. Most kids who're old enough to have lived in peacetime Syria will have been vaccinated but very few have any documentation. There's been vaccination drives and the school system/ministry of health are trying to get everyone up to date but there are thousands of children right now who cant't go to school and its only slowly being fixed. Another problem that's hit a population I've followed since I came here is that as people are moved from camps, to hotels, to different camps again, they might start school and be moved two counties over by next month and have to start all over again proving their eligibility. There's very little consistency to a the life of a refugee. Last note on medical care compared to back home in Syria. Apparantly Syria had a quite patient driven system where if you felt you needed a specialist, you booked an appointment straight to that specialist, and didnt have to go through referrals and GP consultations. In Greece its different and while we have the ability to refer into the Greek system it takes a long time and generates a lot of frustration. It also means we see a LOT of people who need specialist care or psychology and and can do nothing but consult them and refer them into an already overburdened system which takes a long time.
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Apr 17, 2017 21:07
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Apr 17, 2017 21:09
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What are some of your main frustrations with the system / with what you see?
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Apr 17, 2017 22:42
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Another if you don't mind, and please push it back in favor of other posters' questions, is there a curfew of some kind? I assume not since you mention how they stay up late at night, but are they allowed to go out into the nearby towns or cities and walk around and such like? I know next to nothing about refugee conditions, so thank you for the thread and especially the work you and others do.
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Apr 17, 2017 23:17
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What's the male / female ratio?
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Apr 22, 2017 20:27
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What are relationships like between the camp/refugees and the locals? Do you experience any friction from them because of what you do?
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Apr 23, 2017 16:16
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Straight White Shark posted:What are relationships like between the camp/refugees and the locals? Do you experience any friction from them because of what you do? I'm so sorry I haven't been able to get to this before now. We had a few volunteers drop out last minute and I've been working literally 24 hours since tuesday. We finally had a lot of new volunteers come in this weekend and I get a day off to catch up on sleep. I'll do some quick replies and get back to them tomorrow and actually do a few stories. Thanks for being patient. lllllllllllllllllll posted:What's the male / female ratio? Munchables posted:Another if you don't mind, and please push it back in favor of other posters' questions, is there a curfew of some kind? I assume not since you mention how they stay up late at night, but are they allowed to go out into the nearby towns or cities and walk around and such like? I know next to nothing about refugee conditions, so thank you for the thread and especially the work you and others do. Yes the camps are completely open for the residents. This was surprising to me too, but these are not prisoners and its not legal to hold them. The police run entry checks on people entering who aren't known to them, but thats mostly to deter media and people who might want to take advantage of the massive population of children and foreigners. Fruit Smoothies posted:What are some of your main frustrations with the system / with what you see? HOnestly? Greece is everything the republicans think of when they say Big Government. Its slow, bloated and you have to know someone to get anything at all done here. In addition to that there's so much drama within and between the NGOs that it's ridiculous. MDM won't work with MSF and SAMS won't meet with DM who won't work in any population where there's independent volunteers. Its crazy and high schoolesque. Ok, I'm falling asleep on my ipad, I'll be back and maybe see if I have some interesting stories tomorrow
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Apr 23, 2017 16:59
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