As conflict persists throughout the world, refugees continue to flee. Many are housed in isolated camps whilst they undertake the arduous process of applying for legal asylum, meaning months or years of waiting in a container box with minimal to no access to services and transport. ECHO is a multilingual library on wheels that gets books, learning resources, respite, activities and a community space to these places. As policies harshen, we need your help to run our project:
After conflict and violence drove people from their homes, thousands of people find themselves stuck in refugee camps in Greece as they seek a life of security in Europe. Many live for many months, sometimes years in supposedly temporary camps. These places are far from even basic services or transportation to local cities. Refugees find themselves isolated here, struggling to learn the local language or continue their studies: with so much time and so little to do, dreams can die.
ECHO mobile library provides food for the brain - the tools needed to keep dreams alive: a catalogue of fiction, non-fiction, children, young-adult, and resource books in 15 languages, material to aid self-study including learning resources from mother-tongue into Greek, English, German and French. Our library runs regular weekly sessions, organises activities and hosts a community space where families can read together, conversation can be had, and imaginations can be fed by literature.
The funds we collect ensure the library's future. An investment in our core infrastructure - our beloved van - will provide the stability we need to offer access to our library. This will support 100s of book loans, the distribution of 1,000s of learning resources, informal classes and creative activities. The personal long term impacts for each and every reader are harder to quantify: an antidote to boredom, friends made, inspiration regained, old skills bolstered and new ones acquired.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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