Advent Crowdfunding: 25 days, 25,000 for OHF2022 has been an exciting year that has brought many changes. OHF moved to Athens: we said goodbye to Lesvos and built a new community centre in the Greek capital. Soon after its opening, it became clear that there was a great need for such a place, both from …
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VICTORIA COMMUNITY CENTRE Victoria Communiy Centre is openAt the end of February OHF bid farewell to the community centre on Lesvos. And now, on the 4th of April, we as OHF and Drop In The Ocean (Dråpen i Havet) were happy to announce the official opening of the Victoria Community Centre that we run together …
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March has been a busy month for OHF! Soon after bidding farewell to our beloved community centre on Lesvos and the hand over to Europe Cares with a wonderful event that felt like old OHF days, the team went to Athens to work on the preparations of our new community centre: OHF Victoria Community Centre, …
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Handover to Europe Cares After the recent announcement of stopping OHF’s community center activities on Lesvos by the end of February, we are happy to announce that the premises of the center will continue to be available for organisations to run their programs and activities for refugees and asylum seekers on the island thanks to …
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Big News! We have some exciting updates for you about our projects in Greece. We recently made the decision to rent a property in Athens for at least one year with the goal to provide an open community centre to the asylum seeker and refugee population living in Athens. The place is located close to …
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Update Shuttle Bus As announced in the last newsletter, we owe you an update regarding the shuttle bus. We are happy to announce that there is now a bus from the camp to OHF and back twice a day from Monday to Friday. This should enable our visitors to reach the Community Centre dry during …
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Low visitor numbers The number of visitors is dropping- especially because the weather has changed and is getting worse. For the people who live in the camp, opportunities to leave are still unfortunately quite limited. The idea of organising a shuttle bus from the camp to One Happy Family has been proposed. This would enable …
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Visitors to OHF Sadly, the rules regarding entering and exiting the camp have gotten stricter in the past weeks. People are only allowed to leave the camp for a few hours, once a week. Sometimes people are lucky and are able to get more time out of the camp. This seems dependent upon who is …
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Leaving the camp Unfortunately, during the last weeks, the rules were changed again when it is possible for residents to leave the camp and when not. This has unfortunately also led to fewer people being able to visit our community centre again. Currently people who are with their police number on a list are allowed …
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The long wait is over – the Gym has finally reopened!
The gym has been closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, however now we are able to open it as an outdoor space under new rules. The manager of the Gym, Rahman, is so excited.
Our partner organisation Sporos has been working tirelessly in the organic garden over Spring and Summer, being busy with many new projects. All the hard work from Winter and Spring has paid off and now it is harvesting time. Zucchinis, cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggplants have been picked from the garden and given to visitors at …
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Daily business back at OHFThere is a great atmosphere here on the ground with the volunteers. Many of them have not seen the pre-covid days when we had more than 500 visitors a day. It is lovely to see happy visitors return, even if in limited numbers. Like every summer, our opening hours are now from …
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The Bazaar and hygiene packs at OHF We finished the distribution of clothes to single men at OHF this month. In total, we served 1,628 men which was a huge achievement! Again, we thank all our partner organisations who helped with the donations, logistics and distribution. Our online shop for hygiene products is still going …
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Things are looking promising with Greece set to ease some of the lockdown restrictions in late April/early May. For the moment, we are still operating in a slightly different capacity to what we were used to. Our online classes for our community volunteers are still running, and our online shop for the residents of the …
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New video of OHFIf you haven’t watched yet our newest video of how the project is looking at the moment, please watch it here. Our community volunteer Hamid and Fanny, one of our board members, will show you around. We hope you enjoy all the site updates! Online ShopWith Greece still in lockdown, we keep adapting …
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This month – another month in lockdown – we want to focus the news for you on our most important achievement: The free online shop. The free online shop kicked off, and so far we have had a great response. Fifie and the team have been putting together the orders and organising the pick-up times. …
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Another month in lockdown has passed. Our team on the ground keeps improving OHF in order to have it ready for whenever it can be used again for its original purpose. Construction The classrooms between the two containers are now ready! See head picture of the newsletter. The construction is finished, the classrooms are painted …
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Despite the lockdown, the OHF team on Lesvos stayed busy with office work and coordination of in kind donations from supporters during December. At the community centre, Doctors on the ground work tirelessly receiving patients and providing psychological support to children and adults. In the main hall, we had a big distribution of donations – …
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