Today, International Volunteer Day, we would like to thank all the volunteers who, with consistency and selflessness, help METAdrasi’s work. In particular, we thank our interpreters who, recognizing the gap created in mid-September by the reduction of interpreters of the EU Asylum Agency, “stepped in” by volunteering to provide interpretation from the 25th of November until today.
This voluntary effort will be completed very soon, as the normalization of the situation and the payment of the last debts by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum to METAdrasi are expected.
This is not the first time in METAdrasi’s 14 years that the wider team of interpreters has volunteered to help with the difficulties and challenges that our country has faced in managing the migration issue: In 2014, a year after the launch of the Asylum Service, then during the refugee crisis, during the Covid pandemic, and culminating in March 2023, when, apart from volunteering, METAdrasi, a nonprofit Organisation, also allocated its own resources in order to avoid the complete lack of interpretation throughout the country.
Volunteerism is a core value of an open, democratic society and it is important to recognize and appreciate the selfless contribution of volunteers who are an integral part of Civil Society.