By Ruvi | Project Coordinator
Hello, first and foremost I am writing to you to express our gratitude for those who have supported us thus far and to inform you about all the wonderful things our van in Lesvos does for our community.
At Yoga and Sport with Refugees, we provide access to sports that offer essential physical and mental health benefits in a supportive community for thousands of refugees seeking asylum in Lesvos, Greece. To run our daily programs that serve the Kara Tepe refugee camp, we need a passenger van that functions reliably.
One of the cornerstones of our summer offerings is our swimming program where we teach hundreds of people the life saving skill of swimming. This year we are focusing on trauma-informed healing. Both our men and women swimming programs and all of our women’s sports programming rely on the use of a passenger van where we transport people and swimming equipment from the camp to the programs. We also offer a women’s-only fitness program for several hours each day at our gym and the van transports women from the camp to our gym and to the swimming beach.
A functioning van is essential to create program access for women and our current van is not road-worthy or safe. Our van currently travels over 300,000 km/month and spends at least 5-7 days each month in the repair shop, causing us to cancel women’s programming on those days or risk significantly lower attendance given cultural norms and safety concerns that discourage walking from the camp to the programming on a busy highway. We currently spend more than €8000 each year on van repairs.
We aim to raise €23,000 by September 1st to purchase a gently used, functioning van and pay for the insurance and related expenses. Thanks to generous donors, we have already raised €15,000. Please consider helping us close this gap, avoid expensive repairs, and most importantly, offer our life-changing programming to asylum seekers in Lesvos.
Thank you for your attention . Your donation is greatly appreciated and helps create better environments for our delightful community #strongertogether
Kind regards,
Ruvi
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