Coronavirus has had a major impact on our daily lives, but it cannot change our beliefs and our faith in human solidarity.

Our activities continue. All the METAdrasi teams are on the front line on the mainland, as well as at all the key entry points of Leros, Kos, Samos, Chios, Lesvos and Orestiada. With our interpreters, we continue to cover all the needs that arise, while we still provide legal support to the refugee populations on the islands and maintain our safety net for unaccompanied children. 120 children reside at our various shelters and SIL apartments, and the closure of schools poses the extra challenge of keeping adolescents learning and creatively busy in a confined space! Meanwhile, following government’s regulations, all METAdrasi Non-Formal Education Centers have been closed, but we continue to support our students through distance-learning and shelf-learning opportunities. In parallel, we are following all the relevant public health guidelines, reducing travel to a minimum and using home-working where possible.

Our offices remain open for urgent cases by appointment, which can be made by e-mail through emergency@metadrasi.org . If this is not possible, contact can be made by telephone on 214-1008700, ext 282. 

We are particularly concerned about the hundreds of unaccompanied children living on the streets and in the parks of Athens and we will soon be starting a new activity for their support.

We are also concerned about insufficient information due to lack of knowledge of Greek and we are working on ways to further help urgent cases, that have arisen due to the pandemic amongst the refugee population, while also supporting the health authorities and workers who are under such strain.

This is the time that all of us together, and each of us separately, must remember that the best way to protect ourselves is to protect the “Other”.