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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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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