World Refugee Day 2016: Samaritan aid continues
Posted on |
As we commemorate World Refugee Day 2016, SAM.I. member organisations continue to support refugees in Europe – with emergency aid as well as with integration projects.
As part of our motto year “When Numbers Become Faces”, we have already showcased various refugee aid activities of our members, the volunteers who conduct them and the individuals who are receiving their help. Even as the numbers of newly arriving refugees in Europe has decreased in the last months, many activities are still ongoing and as necessary as ever.
ASB Germany continues to support refugee camps in Northern Iraq, for instance by helping children in the camps to cope with the experience of their flight. Their childcare centre offers different activities, aimed at giving a sense of normalcy back to the children’s lives. ASB has also just recently opened a country office in Greece, which is active in building accommodation for the refugees formerly living in the, now evacuated, Idomeni camp. The new accommodations will not only offer far better basic living conditions, they will also offer psychosocial and medical care.
Back in Germany, many of ASB’s local branches are running shelters for new arrivals and are offering essential integration services for refugees, ranging from language courses to help with integration into the labour market.
In Austria, SAM.I. member ASBÖ also continues to offer a large variety of care and integration services. With more than 300 unaccompanied minors in their care, their work has a strong focus on education and integrative spare time activities for young refugees. Young refugees have the opportunity to take part in sports or music workshops. A large variety of educational courses are also on offer, which combine general skills and integrative knowledge such as German courses. Educational and spare time offers are often explicitly coeducational, to naturally introduce the young people to local gender roles, which may differ from what they know from home.
Besides the focus on young people, ASBÖ also offers activities for families, such as urban gardening. As a cooperative activity of people from many nations, it contributes to integration and helps the families to “arrive” in their new lives. A particular focus of the Austrian Samaritans’ educational efforts is also on the alphabetisation of women, many of which arrived in the refugee accommodations without the ability to read or write.
More information on the ongoing refugee activities of the member organisations can be found on the respective websites: