We are an independent group of volunteers responding humanely and compassionately to the humanitarian crisis on Samos.
Samos Volunteers operates following the principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality according to its five core values:
Do No Harm
We are committed to taking a critical approach to our activities to carefully consider the short term and long term impact they have.
Do It For The Many
We are committed to using donor money to reach the maximum number of people in the community. To achieve this we strive for equality of access, meaningful inclusion and representation throughout our organisation.
With Communities
We are committed to working with the camp and local communities on Samos, working together to respond to their needs through listening, learning and adapting.
The Little Things Are The Big Things
We acknowledge that while some of our services might only seem like little contributions they combine to have a large impact on our service users.
A Work In Progress
SV’s services are dynamic and we as an organisation try our best to deliver effective services. We commit to a culture of feedback that contributes to the development of our services.
Our history and our role in Samos
First founded by a collection of individuals in 2016, Samos Volunteers has been responding to the changing needs of the camp population on Samos ever since. We started as a frontline distribution effort but, gradually recognising the development of the situation on the ground, we adapted our effort to the new circumstances and needs.
The drawn-out asylum process often forces individuals and families to settle in the dangerously overcrowded camp for months or even years. Identifying a new need, we changed our focus in the winter of 2016, gradually moving away from the daily distribution of essential items to offering informal educational activities, psycho-social support and a hygiene service.
Nowadays, we focus on empowering asylum seekers during their stay on the island with a wide range of projects. From the Alpha Centre and its daily classes, to our Women’s Safe Space, study and quiet space, to our Laundry Station(s), we aim to bring some humanity to their time on the island.
Whenever possible, we also help to facilitate others in bringing their expertise to address the crisis on Samos. For example, in 2018, we helped the Mazí Youth Centre (Still I Rise) and the Berlin Refugee Law Clinic establish themselves here.
We are also able to provide a space for two legal teams to counsel clients, provide asylum information and protect fundamental human rights. The Samos Legal Centre was set up in summer 2018 and has lawyers and counsellors coming from Refugee Law Clinic Berlin and Avocats sans Frontières France.
The network of NGOs with whom we regularly collaborate includes JustAction Samos, Med’Equali Team, Refugee4Refugees, Movement on The Ground, Action For Education, A Drop in the Ocean, as well as Médecins sans Frontières and many others.
Samos Volunteers holds of a leading role within the tight-knit community of grassroots NGOs on Samos: together with our colleagues in the humanitarian sector - each one from their particular respective area of work - we try to organise a collective and effective effort for the population of thousands of people in the refugee camp.
Moreover, having worked on the ground for over five years, we have become a focal point and go-to source for credible information about the humanitarian crisis on Samos. Countless journalists and researchers have found their way to our Alpha Centre in order to learn more about the situation here on the island. We use our experience to continue professionalising our advocacy efforts and to support other advocacy organisations in doing the same. Our social media channels are used to raise awareness of human rights violations, the challenges and hopelessness that people experience while living in the camp, and to show the diversity, value, talents, needs and stories of displaced people that are so often obscured by the word ‘refugee’, ‘migrant’ or ‘asylum-seeker’.
We support the local community by joining their call for the evacuation of the asylum seeker camps on the Aegean Islands to appropriate facilities on the mainland or elsewhere in Europe. Find out more about our advocacy work here. We support the local economy by sourcing more than 90% of the items that we need for our daily services locally, from stationery and education material to detergent and cleaning supplies.
We are a non-partisan, non-religious organisation committed to treating all of our service users and volunteers equally - regardless of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, political or religious beliefs.
The impact of our work
The pyramid below shows the levels of intervention in psychological help (a.k.a Mental Health & Psycho-Social Services, MHPSS) according to the standards set out by WHO-IASC.
Samos Volunteers' projects cover at least the two middle sections of the scheme. To give an example, stabilising psychological work has an important place in the context of informal education and language classes. And of course, our Welfare programme and Women's Safe Space contribute directly to the proactive approach to psycho-social support we offer to people in Samos camp.
Moreover, if we consider the crucial hygiene service provided through our Laundry Station(s), we can determine that SV in fact actually covers three quarters of the MHPSS pyramid.
Based on this analysis, we can conclude that our operation in Samos is rather important in terms of psychological care for the displaced people living in the camp.
Such an acknowledgement is a huge source of motivation for us, especially during difficult times when we feel like our capacity to actually make a meaningful difference is undermined by factors beyond our control.