Let's help Katerina and Nikos in their beautiful mission

Greece

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.

Overview:
  • There are currently over 2200 refugees in the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos
  • At least half of them are children
  • Since the beginning of 2015, nearly 1 million refugees have arrived in Europe via the Greek islands
We provide more than

850

meals to refugees a day
We distribute

meals and first aid items

for the most needy, inc. children, pregnant women and the sick

05.11.2021

Faizah, for the first time that evening, gazes into the eyes of Paula – a Home for All volunteer – and pulls open her coat. Seeing what she has brought with her, Paula rushes to help.

***

It is a chilly autumn evening of 2015. A dinghy comes to the shore of the Greek island of Lesbos. It is dark out on the beach. The only things gleaming in the moonlight are the hands of the newcomers, covered in gold jewellery. These are their sole possessions. Their homes, their jobs, everything they have acquired so far, have been left behind when they fled from the bombs falling on their cities. Nikos remembers the horrified looks of these drenched people as if it were yesterday. Shortly after the incident, he and Katerina, with whom he used to run a small Greek taverna, decided to completely change their lives and feed the hungry who landed on the island’s beaches every day.

On that fateful evening, Faizah, a 20-year-old Syrian woman, also disembarks from the overcrowded dinghy. She does not raise her eyes. She does not want to greet anyone. She clutches her soaked coat tightly. She doesn’t know if she can trust anyone, because for the past months she hasn’t been able to do so. Faizah does not understand why the smugglers took the engine from the boat on the open water. She hid everything of any value to her under her turquoise coat. The wind picked up and the waves flooded the boat, where the refugees had spent a total of 17 hours without food or drinking water.

“This is not like running away to a better future, it’s like jumping out of a window for fear of fire,” says Nikos.

An hour later, all the passengers of the ill-fated journey go to Katerina and Nikos’ restaurant. They need to get warm and eat a hot meal. Nikos and Katerina are ready – they have been preparing food and welcoming newcomers every day since the crisis began. The volunteers, meanwhile, are trying to make contact with the refugees and learn their stories.

Faizah does not want to talk. She stares at her feet for another hour, refusing to take off her completely soaked, cold coat. She looks as if she has seen the most horrible things imaginable in life. Paula does not leave her side for a moment, reassuring the girl that she is now safe.

All of a sudden, it turns out that the coat had been concealing a six-week-old baby. Its skin is so blue that at first everyone thinks it is too late for rescue. They rush to help and start gently rubbing the baby’s skin until it becomes a healthier colour. Within moments, someone runs to the shop to buy some milk, while someone else calls the doctor.

The child only survived because Katerina, Nikos and their volunteers were on site. Had they not been on the beach that evening, nothing could have been done.

***

Katerina and Nikos have plenty of such stories to tell. They do not like to boast about how many people owe them their lives. They do not give many interviews. They always say that you have to act, not talk. The memories live on in them. They remember every pair of hands that took a meal from them and every person who, overcoming the fear that they no longer had any friends in this world, finally gave them their trust.

Katerina and Nikos create a home for those who have had to leave behind homes of their own. Their help has no boundaries, except for the financial ones of running Home for All. Please support them in this beautiful mission.

Urgent Help Needed

Save the Pharmacy for the Poorest in Togo

This amount will allow for equipping pharmacy shelves for the first half of the year. Ania and Mateusz will take care of this, and they will fly to Togo in February and fill the shelves with the most essential antibiotics, antimalarial drugs, and pain relievers. The Saoudé Pharmacy has people to save. It cannot succeed without your support.

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We already have :
3,419 EUR
We need:
6,667 EUR