Refugee Rights Greece Project #61257

BAAS Community Centre supporting displaced people

by Be Aware And Share

Project Report | May 2, 2024
Spring has Sprung in Ioannina

By Jordan Gardner | Project and Fundraising Coordinator

Dear all,

Here at the Community Centre in Ioannina, Greece we are in the midst of Spring, with rain storms and sunny days galore. Our number of participants remains high and consistent, as we are observing more transfers of people from the islands to the camps surrounding the city. We've just finished an intense deep clean of the centre, where we scrubbed, mended and made the centre more inviting and welcoming than ever. We also spent time weeding and building more furniture so our garden is ready to be enjoyed by our participants to relax, play games or plant herbs and vegetables during Summer days.

Our most recent campaign was focussed on supporting our Community Volunteers (CVs). As we mentioned in our emails and social media posts, our volunteers with lived experience are an important part of our team, enhancing our project, the actions we take and the strength of our team. Social Media content about who our CVs are, why having them as part of our team is important to BAAS and the challenges they may face can be found HERE.

We are delighted to update you that your donations are contributing to us financially supporting 3 Community volunteers, from various home countries, situations and asylum case circumstances, embracing them as a part of our team. So we wanted to say a big THANK YOU!

We look forward to keeping in touch in coming months and in the meantime, you can keep upto with everything BAAS through our Social media or Newsletter.

Our Annual Report from 2023 has also been published if you wish to view it HERE. Showing everything we got upto last year and what your support helped us achieve.

Thank you,

The BAAS Team

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Jan 6, 2024
End of Year Thank you

By Jordan Gardner | Fundraising Coordinator

We want to say a massive thank you for all your ongoing support in 2023!

This year has been our first full year of running our project in Ioannina and we've been overwhelmed with support from people offering their time, funds, energy and care to BAAS and our Community Centre.

Throughout the year, we increasingly had more participants visiting our centre, with the last few months of the year averaging 100-150 people a day. We saw many transfers of people from the Aegean islands and from other registration centres in Greece to the 3 camps surrounding Ioannina, where they have quickly come close to nearing their capacities.

As we are the only project in the area offering clothes and hygiene items, this remains our most popular and essential service but also one that requires lots of monetary support, as we offer these items to the 2000+ displaced people in the Ioannina area. Alongside this, we also see our community of participants coming each day not just to shop in the free store but to mend clothes, have a cup of coffee, be creative, do their washing, have a meal, join in kids activities, use the computers and generally using the space to come together. Our Community Centre remains a space where everyone is welcome and we love embracing the lively atmosphere that our community creates.

We'll keep you updated on more of our plans for 2024 but in these first few weeks of the year, we're focussing on welcoming back our participants to the centre, getting ready for some changes and continuing to strive to meet the wants and needs of displaced people in Ioannina.

We also move into 2024 hoping to see more welcoming, acceptance and compassion for displaced communities across the globe. In the meantime, we appreciate you sharing in and supporting our work as we continue our awareness efforts in Switzerland and our project work in Ioannina, Greece. We couldn't do all that we do without your support, so we're incredibly grateful. Thank YOU!

Links:

BAAS Website

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