Northern Greece July 2016

spontaneous mindful movement session with children 

50,000 + refugees are now stuck in Greece following the EU Turkey deal , actually the deal seems to have stalled but this does not help the thousands of people who are waiting with uncertainty about their future. On this, our third visit I have gone out with our friend Salah Baba Rasool from the Welsh Refugee Council to help establish our project Refugee Trauma Initiative ( see the website www.refugeetrauma.org for more details ) in the camps in northern Greece following the bulldozing of Idomeni where we were previously based.

Piled up with yoga mats to run a mindfulness session at Lagadikia

Once again the conditions are different. On our first trip people were hopeful of a future in Germany, Sweden or another destination. Now there is far less certainty about what lies ahead. The often military run camps are supported by ngos on the ground trying to establish some services Refugee Trauma Initiative is a project set up to offer Psychosocial support to refugees and training and support to volunteers. Lack of activities and anything to do along with the heat of a Greek summer foster boredom and frustration.

Women long to be able to cook for themselves.  Slowly things are being put into place to improve the situation but mostly the families we met wanted to be able to move on. The first wave of refugees were often the young men, sons  sent ahead many of whom made it to Germany. Now many of the people in the camps are the parents, sisters, wives and children of those who have reached north west Europe. We negotiated permission to work in two camps alongside the Danish Refugee Council, MSF and Medicin du Monde the Greek Drs of the world outfit. I am particularly delighted to be working in partnership with Nurture Project International who provide fantastic support for mothers and babies and very kindly are sharing their great dome tents with us so that we can provide group work for women. This sort of support has been close to our hearts from the first visit in Lesvos that we made last september. We are also offering debriefing for Nurture volunteers, Syrian American Medical Services( SAMS) and sessions for Help Refugee volunteers amongst others. The work volunteers do is demanding and intense and it is wonderful to be able to offer spaces for reflection and decompression

Dancing with Kurdish women

This time our team comprised of Beth our wonderful coordinator. Marais our UK coordinator who came out for a few days and Salah who himself had made a similar journey 19 years ago eventually finding refuge in the UK. Together we connected with about 130 refugees as well as many volunteers and Humanitarian aid workers. We ran several mindfulness based stress reduction sessions, had many cups of tea with families and couples and shared a meal with a lovely young kurdish family. We did some 1:1 sessions with particularly vulnerable people including young unaccompanied minors. We have bought equipment yoga mats, rugs, arabic /english books, soft cuddly toys and other toys for the project so that the work can be continued by other therapists following in our footsteps over the coming months. We were able to fund accommodation and flights for team members to enable this work and are extremely grateful to all our donors for your generosity. Although the refugee crisis is no longer deemed news worthy we hope that the plight of these people is not forgotten. If you haven't already done so I really recommend the BBC series Exodus which was shown a couple of weeks ago and probably still available on player.

warmest wishes 

Ariana