In 2015, 856,000 people passed through the Greek islands, and in 2017 and 2018 only just under 30 thousand (according to UNHCR). But 2019 brought already a growth – over 60,000 newcomers. Today, boats coming to Greek beaches are back again, and practice shows that you can get stuck in Lesbos for a good few years. Nikos and Katerina run a small restaurant on the island, where every refugee can feel at home and eat a meal for free.
09.07.2021
“We are not saviours of the world or gods providing help. Our only task is to figure out a future for these people,” says Nikos, standing on several hectares of fenced-off land. There is nothing here now, but in two months’ time this land will give work to another 10 families who are awaiting a miracle in Europe’s largest refugee camp.
Homeland is another of Katerina and Nikos’s ideas, after Home for All. They couple have been meeting the needs of migrants arriving in Europe, on the Greek island of Lesbos, for 6 years. Home for All feeds the hungry and provides basic necessities to people who don’t know how to survive to see tomorrow. The second idea creates the circumstances for their perspective to reach beyond just another day. Work in the vegetable garden will give them independence, restore their dignity and give meaning to their daily life, which today is just passive existence in a closed camp. It will provide them with a future.
Homeland is up and running. Thanks to the hard work of four men, the Home for All kitchen no longer has to buy vegetables. Soon the local market will also receive over a thousand watermelons, over a thousand melons, loads of aubergines, tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, peppers and courgettes. The project is operating wonderfully, and now it’s going to be even bigger. On the new land we saw today, houses will be built for 10 more families and more fields will be prepared, turning the camp residents’ eagerness to work into organic produce.
We are with Katerina and Nikos at the scene. We are supporting them in these extraordinary ideas, which, thanks to you, can turn another dramatic human experience into something more than a better tomorrow: namely, a future.
Teams of Angels is a project where your regular support is constantly with Katerina and Nikos and is making these wonderful ideas a reality. Join Katerina and Nikos’s team and see that you can make a difference.
27.08.2023
The unpaved road stretches for kilometres and winds down the mountainous slopes. It cuts through bone-dry pine forests. From here to Mitylena, the island’s capital, it is more than 40 kilometres. To any sign of civilisation – more than 10. Out of sight, out of mind of all outsiders, a gigantic new refugee camp is […]
14.08.2023
Onur was a baker in Kurdistan. He is not afraid of any job. Stately, broad-shouldered, hands like vices. They have strength and feel. He arrived in Lesbos eight years ago. Abdul got off the boat on a Greek beach a year later. In Syria, he was a mechanic. He has fixed up his decrepit old […]
09.08.2023
“No disease will touch them. They are wild trees. They have already survived more than one pest.” When Nikos talks about olives, he grabs the listener’s full attention. You fall into a tunnel where there are you, Nikos and the olives. We talk like this for several hours. I don’t know how many. Nobody is […]
