Between a rock and a hard place

The focus of the camp is to get the refugees arriving from Turkey registered and on their way to their final destination within the EU as soon as possible

 Some 465,000 people passed through Moria camp in the last year. Until October they slept in the open air in an olive grove until they could be registered and given papers to travel on. Apparently the grove was as crowded with people as if it were a music festival, but with traumatised people quite unaware of where they were or where they were going. The olive grove now has no olive trees since the were used for firewood as the nights grew colder. There were no facilities and so the land is now polluted with human excrement and cannot be replanted and used to grow olives for at least ten years.

In October a group of volunteers said enough is enough and they approached owner of the olive grove to lease it so that proper facilities could be brought on site. It seems that in spite of the hostility of the government this was allowed to go ahead. The group formed a charity (Better Days for Moria [on Facebook] ) to take the lease and to crowd fund for the facilities needed. The funding via Facebook was very successful and so there are now tents for food, clothing and medical facilities. A number of different groups work under the umbrella of the main charity including the one for whom we are working Positive Action in Housing 
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The refugees waiting registration now sleep in plastic sheds put up by the UNHCR. The UNHCR would like to put up a properly resourced UN refugee camp, but the Greek government are refusing to admit that they have a refugee camp on their territory - it would be/is the first in Europe since WW2. It seems that the lack of cooperation by the Greek government might not be unrelated to their tense relationship with the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. So the facilities are basic in the extreme. The plastics sheds surround a former prison with 12ft high wall and razor wire. The feeling is oppressive and those escaping oppression at home must feel that they have only fund new oppression to replace the old.

For this reason the work of us volunteers is to make the refugees as welcome as we can before they embark on the next part of their journey.