Busy OHF needs your support

Advent Crowdfunding: 25 days, 25,000 for OHF
2022 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 the visitors and the partner organisations. In order for our centre to continue its work for another year, we need your support. Please help us raise 25,000 CHF in 25 days in order for us to continue making real our vision of working together and learning from each other. Please also spread the word so that as many people as possible can support OHF and help us achieve our goal. The crowdfunding platform can be found clicking here.
And if you follow OHF on social media, you will get an exciting insight into our work this year every day for the next 25 days on both Instagram and Facebook.
Thank you for your continued support and for helping to keep us together as One Happy Family also in 2023. 

Busy OHF
Even though the year is coming to an end, there is still a lot going on in the community centre. The weather and temperatures are slowly adapting to the season and therefore a meeting will be held next week to consider how we can support our visitors in the winter and how we organise the winterization of the building. 
The capacity-building and information-sharing sessions for our team members (OHF and partners) continue too. We had two follow-up sessions about child protection and mental health awareness, both conducted by our partner IRC. Additionally, in December ELIL will provide an info session about the current situation of the asylum process in Greece. 
And we have a wonderful news to announce: we are also offering lunches now at OHF Athens. We started the lunch distributions on the 28th of November. Two days per week we get the food from Project Armonia, the other three days it’s delivered by Saffron Kitchen.
And, of course, there are many activities taking place in and around the cafe, as always. Mondays and Thursdays we have a Chat Club, Tuesday is Game Club Day (see below), and on Wednesdays IRC organizes Kids Recreational Activities. In addition to these offers, we received some wonderful visits this month – Clowns without Borders and Red Noses International brought joy and laughter to our cafe and rooftop space over the past few weeks! Our centre’s visitors had so much fun singing, dancing and playing games with them that we would like to extend a huge thank you to Red Noses International and Clowns Without Borders for coming to our centre!

Introducing… Game Club!
Every Tuesday from 3 to 5pm our Game Club is carried out in either the cafe or the backyard (depending on how chilly the upcoming winter months are!)
Whether it’s a heated backgammon tournament, table tennis, bingo or chess, people come along for some fun and a bit of friendly competition. 
We’re also open to suggestions, so if anyone has a specific game in mind that they would like to play, they can let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

Meet the partners… Lighthouse Relief
‘At Lighthouse Relief, we run an info point 5 days per week to serve the immediate needs of our beneficiaries. We provide case management in complex cases, medical support in terms of booking appointments, as well as referrals and follow-up referrals for complex cases.
Our referrals are for housing, legal and psycho-social support requests. We give information and we lead the beneficiaries regarding how to issue documentation needed so as to access public services and complete bureaucratic procedures (such as AFM, AMKA, bank accounts, etc.)’
When asked about being part of the Victoria Community Centre, they said: ‘Being able to interact with various partners, so as to fulfil the requests of a beneficiary with a holistic approach, would not be possible without the presence of the Victoria Community Centre.’ Thank you Lighthouse Relief!