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Biggest distribution of toiletries

Today we have prepared and bought toiletries for the biggest distribution of toiletries we have ever had!

Since we have had some weeks off and distributed toiletries only to new arrivals last Saturday, we want to cover all the families, couples and single women in the camp this Saturday. We usually give out to 70 families/couples/single women in total every week with a system where we take section by section. It will probably take the whole day to distribute on Saturday, just like it took the whole day to prepare today. We know how important and needed this is for the people in Vial, so it is absolutely worth it to use some days on this! We are just happy we are able to do this!

Pia Simonsen and Kristin Gjelsvik bought most of the toiletries we will distribute on Saturday, but we also had some left in our container that other people have paid for. In addition to Kristin has brought toiletries that students from Rothaugen school in Norway has donated and Valerie Van Harten has brought toiletries from Netherlands that we also will give out as well. We really appreciate that they make it possible for us to distribute to so many people! They really deserve a BIG THANK YOU!

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For the babies

Today we have given out 3 moses baskets, 8 baby bags and strollers to babies who lives in apartments. We also gave out nappy creams, diapers and wet wipes.

People in apartments don’t get the things they need. We know where many of the babies are living because we have a contact who is showing us.

The bags are made by Sølvi Sinkaberg and consist of different clothes for babies, outdoor dress, bag for stroller, one big blanket, one small blanket and a teddy bear.

The contents of the bags depends on how old the baby is and what we have of different things at the moment they are made. Sølvi has made 25 bags in total and we have given out almost all of them.

The bags are a mix of donations from the Norwegian group «HÅP» (HOPE) and some things that we had in our storage place.

The moses baskets are donated by Carry The Future.

Thora Lise Roppestad has bought the strollers for her donations.

We want to thank those who make this possible for us! The apartments are often cold and that is not nice for small babies…

We are so happy that we are able to give this to them!

The photos are posted with permission!

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New volunteers

These last days we have got six new volunteers!

Two of them has been volunteering with us before and four are new.

We are so happy to have you on our team! Thank you for wanting to help us. When we are many volunteers, it is easier to help.

We love having many volunteers!

Four of the volunteers, Jill Thomas, Cielle Lucas, Jenny Petro and Tom Cartwrightare are from the organization Carry The Future.

We are so happy to cooperate with you!

Thora Lise Roppestad is from Norway. This is her first time volunteering on Chios. She has been volunteering in Thessaloniki and on Lesvos before.

Kaled Mohammed from Syria is back from Thessaloniki. He will be volunteering with us for 12 days before he moves to Netherland to work.

We welcome you all!

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Thank you for strollers

Thank you so much Hanne, Kjetil og Ruth for 32 strollers 🙏🌷

It’s SO needed 🙌😃there is many “new arrivals” and they don’t have anything and that really means nothing 😓

You can try to imagine what it means not to have washing powder, pampers, nappy cream, sanitary pads, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste and only one set of clothes that you might have borrowed from your friend 😓try to imagine not to have a stroller to your baby and be afraid 😦 every night because of snakes 🐍 and rats 🐀 attaching you children 👶 😞

Thanks to good hearted people in this group we manage to keep IRIS center open and help the families on the run 🙏

THANK YOU SO MUCH for caring 💕

Thank you for the strollers !
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Thank you to HÅP and Sølvi

Thank you so much to our dear Sølvi and HÅP for helping us every time we ask 🙏💕

HÅP focuses on the kids and thanks to HÅP we’re able to give the kids one food bag at every visit with egg, a fruit and orange juice 👍🍊the kids don’t get enough vitamins, calcium and proteins so we try to give them a healthy meal to eat in the camp 👌we also give them corn flakes and milk provided by HÅP.

Sølvi and HÅP give us toiletries that we need and give out to first visit, monthly visiting and if the families that have been at IRIS two weeks ago 🌷she also give us the possibility to treat those who need it lice treatment, from the pharmacy in Thimiana. From that pharmacy we also received nappy cream payed by HÅP.

Thank you so much Sølvi for your priceless support to IRIS 🙏🌷🙌😃

See you soon 🇬🇷✨

Thank you to HÅP and Sølvi !

 

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Help feed hungry children

🍌 At Iris Center, lately, we have distributed alot of bananas due to the recent increase in new boat arrivals into Chios.

🍌 At Iris Center we offer healthy fruits and other nutritional snacks to the children (in a food bag including also orange juice) as they wait for their parents to collect hygiene packs and clothes donations.

🍌 If you would like to help us feed hungry mouths with more nutritious fruits please consider a donation. The paypal.me donations to Iris Center is administered by Hannah Parr (causing her name to show up as the receiver).

🍌 100% of the cash donations go directly to the cause.

🍌 Please remember that when fruits and other foods and hygiene products are bought locally, it also means that we can support the local community in Chios.

🍌Thank you for your support!

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A new week

💙 There will be 434 children and parents coming to Iris Center this week! This is more weekly visitors than usual, but there have been many boats arriving in Chios lately so the amazing team wants to try and do everything they can to see the usual visitors and the new arrivals.

💙 Every Saturday morning, Iris volunteers go to the Vial camp to register visitors for the next week. They try their best to find and make sure the new arrival families have an appointment. It’s very urgent for them to come to Iris Center as soon as possible because it’s the fastest way for them to get the hygiene items and clothes they need right away. Vial camp has a small warehouse and does some distributions but they don’t give all the items we do and usually cannot get the items to the families as fast as we can because they have to follow more restrictions than we do.

💙 It’s equally important that the families come to escape the harsh conditions of the camp as soon as possible so that they can see some of the people around who care about them and want to help them before they could start to lose hope. It’s the beginning of growing relationship that Janne and the different volunteers at Iris will have with the families as long as they are stuck in Chios.

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Urgent need of donations and volunteers

💙 We are in URGENT need of all kinds of donations and supplies
We currently only have enough of some supplies to last for the next two weeks. We most urgently need children and adults underwear all sizes, children and adult socks all sizes, deodorant, toothbrushes, razors, shampoo and laundry washing powder.

Some more supplies are on they way to us and those will help a lot but they will not arrive until two more weeks. If you can donate funds, please use this paypal me account. Hannah, a dedicated Iris volunteer, has kindly offered to collect the donations until the paperwork for the Iris NGO is approved and a bank account can be opened for it.

If you can send supplies, please email us at Iriscenterchios@gmail.com and we can arrange it together.

As of June 22, 2018 CESRT has stopped sending us supplies and funds so if you have contributed to CESRT on behalf of HOPE/Iris in the past and would like to continue, please contact us at Iris directly for that going forward. Thank you.

💙 We urgently need volunteers on the ground and remotely
Due to the support of some of you directly and your referrals, we should have enough volunteers to run the center through the end of July (and we are always happy to have more). We would really appreciate your help in spreading the word to try and get more volunteers on the ground for the rest of the year.

We also have a small remote team supporting Iris and would love for more people to join us. If you have time to contribute from home in the areas of operations, volunteer recruiting, social media, video editing, fundraising or legal advice we would be very happy to hear from you. You can email us at iriscenterchios@gmail.com.

💙 About Iris
Iris helps more than 1,200 visitors and distributes more than 13,000 items each month!

We support refugee children and parents in Chios by giving them a place to get distributions of clothes and hygiene items and have showers, relax, have a snack and play while they wait. It’s an absolutely critical service for the refugees, especially now that they are stuck in Chios for longer and longer. It provides them with a place to get supplies they need to survive there for long periods of time and with a place they can go to escape the harsh conditions that they live in every day.

The Iris volunteers run the center by each taking a specific role for a shift (you can change roles each shift or each day). The roles are about giving hygiene supplies for the shower area and to take with them, helping to pick clothes from the donated clothes wardrobe, doing planned activities with the children and parents, playing outside games with the children and parents, welcoming and registering the visitors to Iris, stocking and managing the supplies and coordinating special projects.

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The name of our organisation

Why we chose the name Iris.

💙 A Connection to our history
The blue iris flower is a symbol of hope. The House of the People Europe, HOPE name will always have a special place in the hearts of all the amazing volunteers from all over the world who gave their support in so many different ways to build it into the safe haven that it is today.

💙 A Connection to Greece
Iris is a Greek goddess. Greece is the place where our volunteers and refugee visitors at the center will continue to meet each other for the first time and the place we will all keep in our hearts when we move on to new journeys.

💙 A Connection to a world where are all one.
Iris is the Greek goddess of the rainbow. The rainbow has long been used as a symbol of diversity and social change. We will use it as the light that guides us in our fight for a world where there are no borders and only brothers and sisters together. The rainbow that came to us above the field next to Iris one hard day makes us believe it’s meant to be. 🌈

The rainbow showed up over the Iris Center