The event for the completion of the “Empower YOUth”* project took place on January 18^th, in a warm and enthusiastic atmosphere. The project, launched in 2022, was implemented by SolidarityNow in collaboration with the Norwegian organization Norsensus Mediaforum. “Empower YOUth” aimed to empower 28 young individuals from various vulnerable groups, including Roma, migrants/asylum seekers, refugees, young people with disabilities, and individuals residing in remote areas facing poverty, LGBTQI+, serving as agents of positive change within their respective communities.

“Be the change you want to see.”

The 28 young participants attended a series of training and workshops where they implemented some of their ideas into small-scale activities and community-level interventions. These initiatives were presented during the celebration event!

The four interventions implemented, concerned:

• Combatting stereotypes about the Roma community
• Establishing a self-help group for individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Addressing gender and ethnic discrimination against Pomak women &
• Empowering learning opportunities for refugee children.

The event received a warm welcome from Prodromos Pyrros, Secretary General for Social Solidarity & Fight Against Poverty, Ministry of Social Cohesion & Family Affairs, and Gelly Aroni, Representative of the General Secretariat for Vulnerable Persons & Institutional Protection of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum. Maria Tsene, Assistant Director of the Active Citizens Fund Program at the Bodossaki Foundation, and Christina Psarra, General Director of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) Greece, shared insights into the profound impact of programs dedicated to empowering young people. The project’s outcomes were presented by the coordinators of SolidarityNow and the representative of Norsensus Mediaforum.

The empowerment story of the young participants in a video.

The journey of empowering young participants in the “Empower YOUth” project has been beautifully captured in a video by director Vera-Iona Papadopoulou. This compelling video, unveiled at the event, provides a vivid portrayal of the transformative process undergone by these young individuals. You can watch the video by following this link: https://youtu.be/2HbWHZSvVaI?si=HoGqinWxoBoz3FA2

The next step

“Empower YOUth is a milestone for the empowerment of young people from vulnerable groups, who are a strategic target of the organization. Recognizing the unique challenges faced by young adults in navigating the transition to adulthood, SolidarityNow aims to provide a supportive framework for managing responsibilities safely. The focus remains on empowering both young adults and the professionals who support them by strengthening the involvement and contribution of young people in resolving social issues and at all stages of implementing social actions”, Marilyn Polena, General Manager. 

The Active Citizens Fund in Greece is supported through a € 15 m grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway as part of the EEA Grants 2014 – 2021. The programme aims to develop the sustainability and capacity of the civil society sector in Greece and to strengthen its role in promoting and safeguarding democratic procedures, active citizenship, and human rights. The Fund Operator for the Active Citizens fund in Greece is Bodossaki Foundation in consortium with SolidarityNow. More information: https://www.activecitizensfund.gr/en/

In a warm atmosphere, an event full of stories, emotions, and numbers was held on Thursday, June 29th at the organization’s Athens Solidarity Center (ASC), in the presence of the Mayor of Athens, Kostas Bakoyannis. The work carried out at the Center by the side of the most vulnerable was presented through human stories and data, covering the period August 2022 – May 2023. The event was attended by representatives of the civil society, the local authorities and other stakeholders.

The above-mentioned period is the third grant by the EEA Grants funding mechanism for the Athens Solidarity Center, which ends in July 2023. It is worth emphasizing that the Centre started its operation in 2014 due to the EEA Grants funding that saw and recognized in it the potential and the need to implement such a project.

Since 2014, the Athens Solidarity Centre has been continuously on the side of the most vulnerable, providing free social welfare services -legal, social, accounting, psychological and employability- to all those in need without discrimination. In the reporting period, a total of 1,965 people benefited from 7,336 individual sessions.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of SolidarityNow, Stelios Zavvos, welcomed the audience and underlined: “The work we are implementing at the Athens Solidarity Center is not only reflected in numbers. It is part of the overall humanitarian work of the organization, which through its actions supports our most vulnerable fellow human beings to live a life with dignity and prospects. We are proud of the 350,000 people we have helped in total to date. This would not have been possible without our partnerships, such as the one with the Municipality of Athens, which has always been at our side since the beginning of the Center’s operation. Today, I would particularly like to thank the representatives of the EEA Grants and the donor countries as well as the Mayor of Athens, Kostas Bakoyannis, for their valuable support of our work. I wish the same for the years to come.”

Mr. Christian Halvorsen, Deputy Head of Mission, Norwegian Embassy in Athens, said: “The Center is a shining example of solidarity in action. I was here in 2013 when the space was still being formed before it started operating, and I am sure that people who have passed through here have countless stories to tell about how their lives have been changed. I am particularly pleased that Norway through the EEA Grants has been one of the first donors/supporters of the Center.”

On behalf of the EEA Grants Fund Operator, Epaminondas Farmakis, Director of the EEA Grants’ “Local Development and Poverty Reduction” and “Asylum and Migration” Programs in Greece, said: “I would like to congratulate the team of professionals at the Athens Solidarity Centre for ten years of successful operation and for the imprint of their work on the lives of so many people. The support of the Center is a very important program of the EEA Grants and is based on the effective collaboration among all the parties involved.”

The support of the Municipality of Athens and its close cooperation with a civil society organization was praised in a statement by the Mayor of Athens, Mr. Kostas Bakoyannis, who said: “The Municipality of Athens embraced the initiative for the creation of Solidarity Centers through a difficult time for the country and for our city from the very beginning; and continues to do so steadily during the 10 years of SolidarityNow’s operation. Our goal is to remain a supporter of such civil society initiatives. I would like to congratulate SolidarityNow for the excellent collaboration over the years and for the great work it is implementing through the Athens Solidarity Centre, which I hope to continue with the same strength and energy in the future.”

Highlights of the period August 2022-May 2023 follow briefly:

– Expansion of the social groups receiving support by the Center (ex-prisoners, people over 50, LGBTQI+, Roma, undocumented people).

– Immediate response to the needs of the displaced from Ukraine, with support in the registration process at the asylum service, labor market access seminars and psychological support.

– 27% of the beneficiaries of the Employability Service entered the labor market.

– 25% of the Center’s beneficiaries are single-parent families.

– 169 people gained access to social benefits.

For the end, the event’s participants had the chance to watch short videos of beneficiaries narrating their stories and how they were supported by the Center’s services and people. Among them was Idryssa, from Côte d’Ivoire, one of the victims of torture who benefits from the Center’s services in many ways. Today, with the coordinated efforts of the Center and other organizations, Idryssa got international protection, and works legally in Greece, being a great example of strength and inclusion.

* Since August 2022, the Athens Solidarity Center is financed by EEA Grants, with ΣΟΛ Crowe and HumanRights360 as the fund operator.

**The Center is also supported by the Municipality of Athens.

UNHCR and SolidarityNow connect refugees with employers

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and SolidarityNow organize a day dedicated to connecting employers with job-seeking refugees on Friday May 5^th at the Blue Refugee Center in Thessaloniki.

The Job Fair aims to connect refugees to available job opportunities, introduce them to employers, and familiarize them with the interview process.

More than 15 companies from various industries will participate in the event, conducting recruitment interviews and evaluating candidates’ CVs.

Alongside the job interviews, two keynote discussions will take place. The first will be a presentation of personal experiences related to work in Greece by refugees living and working in the country. The second will be an open dialogue between representatives from businesses and refugees concerning the opportunities and challenges in the Greek labor market. During this discussion, UNHCR will also present its online platform for connecting employers with refugee job seekers, which operates in collaboration with Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

The event will take place between 11:00-16:00 on May 5th, 2023.

The address of the Blue Refugee Center is I. Koletti 25D, Thessaloniki.

Entry to the event is free.

 The conference was successfully held with the aim of finding collaborative solutions to the issue of human trafficking between Greece and Bulgaria.

The conference was organized on March 14 in Athens by the administrators of the Active Citizens Fund program in Greece – SolidarityNow, Bodossaki Foundation – and in Bulgaria – Open Society Institute Sofia, Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation and Trust for Social Achievement. The participants included representatives from the Council of Europe, the Academic Area, Embassies, institutional bodies, and international, European and local civil society bodies, which are actively involved in issues related to trafficking in human beings, migration and the protection of human rights.

Why Greece and Bulgaria?

Bulgaria is mainly a country of origin of human trafficking victims, while Greece is a transit or destination country.  According to data from the National Referral Mechanism for the Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Human Beings in Greece for 2020, out of the 167 victims registered, 74 were children and 33 of them originating from Bulgaria.

During the conference, the need for transnational cooperation was emphasized, among others, by the Vice-President of the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA), Ms. Antoaneta Vassileva and the Special Secretary for the Protection of Unaccompanied Minors and former Head of the Office of the National Rapporteur on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Mr. Heracles Moskoff, who honored the conference with their presence.

Ms. Vassileva stressed that “The governments of both countries should secure the funding for the implementation of actions against human trafficking. In addition, the use of the national referral mechanism is considered necessary and, equally important is the continuous education and training in the identification of potential victims by the professionals involved, police officers, lawyers, social workers, psychologists. Human trafficking is actual an invisible crime, which today in the digital environment is becoming even more invisible. Protecting victims is a collective duty and should be at the top of the agenda.”

During his speech, Mr. Moskoff underlined: “Human trafficking knows no borders and national laws. The goal of the slave traders is profit and their product is humans. To prevent all those who exploit human dignity, we need to overcome conventional perceptions and build a multidisciplinary cooperation between the state, international organizations and civil society in terms of Preventing the phenomenon, Suppressing crime and Protecting victims with a more inclusive and victim-centered approach. Respectively, and aiming at prevention, we operate the National Emergency Response Mechanism for the early identification and immediate accommodation of unaccompanied minors living in precarious conditions or homelessness. To date, more than 3,258 children have benefited from the mechanism.”

The three critical aspects

The conference program included three panel discussions with more than 20 prominent speakers, who focused on the three critical aspects of the issue: the protection of victims through the analysis of existing protection systems and the application of victim-centered approaches; the exchange of best practices to prevent and reduce trafficking in human beings and the identification of the obstacles depriving victims’ of accessing justice.

The discussions and the productive exchange of views between the speakers and the participants underscored that, due to their vulnerable status, migrants/refugees are potential victims, while special reference was made to e-trafficking as the new way of approaching potential victims. A common ground was the need for prevention through information, education and awareness-raising of all stakeholders, including both institutional bodies and services, but also all the dynamic parts of societies and citizens.

Worldwide, according to the International Labor Organization, 40.3 million people are victims of trafficking, 75% of them are women and girls, and 1 in 4 are children.

You can watch the speeches made in the context of the conference here. We thank blod.gr for the video recording. 

*The conference is a regional action of the Active citizens fund program, fund operated in Greece by Bodossaki Foundation in consortium with SolidarityNow.

The Active citizens fund in Greece is supported through a € 13.5 m grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway as part of the EEA Grants 2014 – 2021. The programme aims to develop the sustainability and capacity of the civil society sector in Greece, and to strengthen its role in promoting and safeguarding democratic procedures, active citizenship, and human rights. The Fund Operator for the Active citizens fund in Greece is Bodossaki Foundation in consortium with SolidarityNow.