By Maeve O'Gorman | Project Coordinator
Hello!
I hope you are enjoying a relaxing summer, wherever you are (unless you are Irish where it is already officially Autumn). Before we get to all the updates from Ioannina, I would firstly like to once again thank you so much for your continued support of our project. Times are really tough for organisations supporting refugees in Greece right now, so your donation really makes all the difference.
In good news, many of our incredible teachers received their papers in the last few months, and have moved on from Greece with their families. This is of course bittersweet for us, but we are happy that they are finally out of the limbo of the Greek asylum system. And, leaving Habibi and Sport never means leaving our community. Our former teachers Rahmat and Eisa are now leading the team setting up the new Yoga and Sport project in Paris, teaching boxing, fitness and running, Payman and Sakineh have classes in their camps in Germany teaching boxing and yoga respectively, and all the team in Germany have been making the most of the cheap summer public transport to have Habibi and Sport meet-ups regularly in different cities. This constant movement and change in the team in Ioannina also leaves space for us to give leadership opportunities to more refugees, who bring fresh ideas and energy to the project.
One of the most difficult goodbyes was for our amazing Community Coordinator, Fereshte, who left Greece with her family just this week. Her work in encouraging and empowering more women to take part in the project, meant that for the last 2 months, there were more women than men in our activities, which is a first for any Yoga and Sport project.
We now say hello to our new Coordinator, Emily, who is from Scotland. She has a background in Human Rights Law and has been working in Jordan with displaced people for the last 6 months, and previously in Geneva supporting Human Rights Defenders.
I have attached the last three monthly reports of Yoga and Sport with Refugees, so you can get a taster for all the activities happening across the 4 YSR projects.
Finally, I unfortunately have to reiterate the crisis in funding for our project. Many public and private donors have stopped funding projects in Greece as - understandably - money continues to be funneled into supporting the Ukrainian relief effort. If you appreciate and value the work that we do, please share our story with your friends and family and encourage them to start a monthly donation, however small. Every euro helps. As we approach the 1 year anniversary of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, see renewed violence in DRC and ongoing conflict in Kurdistan it is important to remember that the people we work with also need support. The Greek government is doing its best to curb human rights of non-Ukrainian refugees, to push their needs under the rug, to leave them to die in small boats without engines in the Aegean, to hide them behind walls, and in closed camps on remote islands. NGOs are trying to fill the gaps intentionally created with Greek and EU money. We are just one of the organisations providing access to safe spaces, to leadership positions and to community. We urgently need more donations to continue our work.
So please tell people, put us in contact with people in media, get an influencer to shout out our page, contact us to start a fundraising event, anything you can do is so so so appreciated.
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