How to plan a volunteering trip to Greece?

I get asked frequently how to plan a trip to Greece to do volunteering for refugees. Based on my extensive research before I went to Greece, my experiences in Greece and conversations with other volunteers, I want to share some of these experiences and recommendations in this post.

Several opportunities
What the volunteering opportunities for you look like strongly depend on where you want to go, for how long and what your skills and interests are. Most organisations prefer or even restrict their volunteering positions to people that are present for a certain minimum amount of time. This is usually at least 1-2 weeks.
At the time when we were organising our trip, most camps in Northen Greece (around Thessaloniki) were about to be closed with people moved to the south (around Athens). So, the areas with the main refugees were Athens and the islands (Lesvos etc).
We decided to look for volunteering opportunities close to Athens, because these are easier to reach. And since we were there only for about one week, we did not want to spend too much time with travelling to an island.

Some example organisations
We contacted most of the organisations that were listed on the sources mentioned below (see link list), but not all of them replied. Here are the opportunities that we were interested in:

  • Drop in the Ocean: (link)
    This is a volunteer-run organisations, that is active in the biggest camp on Greek mainland, it is close to Athens and called “Skaramangas”. They organize clothes distributions, activities for children/youths and run a “mother / baby space” – this is a container where mothers can have a break from busy/crowded camp live and volunteers take care of their children and babies for some hours. Registration for volunteering is very professional, with an online application form on their website.
  • Desaster Tech Lab (DTL): (link)
    Helping with installing / maintaining the communication infrastructure (WiFi) in camps seemed to be matching with our skills. Unfortunately, the response from them was quite late and then it did not work out because they did not have any installations scheduled for the time frame when we were there.
  • Teaching opportunities:
    These were especially interesting for Rosa (english teacher). Unfortunately, all organisations that we found and seemed to be active in this area did not want to take in volunteers that are staying for less than 2 weeks. I understand that this makes totally sense, since the teaching programs should have some continuity.
  • Maharcar: (link)
    Here you can volunteer as a driver (you have to bring your own car or rent one) to drive things from one location to another (mainly betweem warehouses and camps). This seems to be very flexible. You just register and then tell them the days that you are available. Also suitable for short-term volunteers. In the time frame when we were planning to come, they were mainly active in the Northen part of Greece and not so much around Athens, so we did not considered it as first priority (more as a fall-back).
  • Warehouse work:
    Most of the aid supply arrives at one of the big warehouses, is sorted there and then commissioned to the locations where they are needed the most. For example, second hand clothes have to be sorted by type, winter/summer, gender, size.
    The biggest warehouse around Athens seems to be the one in Elliniko.
    It constantly needs people to unpack and sort items. Without these items sorted and ready for pick up, nothing can be distributed! This is why volunteers are strongly encouraged to spend at least a part of their time here. It is a good way to be introduced to volunteer work.
    The warehouse is open from 11.00 – 18.00 (Monday – Friday). Volunteers just show up, it seems there is no registration possible.
    How to get there:
    a) Take bus A2 or B2 from Syntagma Square. Bus stop called “??.S????G????S”
    b) Bus A2: Get off at “1? ?G.??S??” (1st St Kosmas).
    c) Bus B2: Get off at the end of the line. It is inside the Elliniko complex.
    Bring your ID/passport in case you need to show identification at the police checkpoint at the entrance. Please say that you are going to the Pampiraiki Warehouse as a volunteer. Make sure you bring your own food as there are no other options available.
    In the end, we did not go to this warehouse – because the organisation where we ended up volunteering with had its own (smaller) warehouse where also some volunteers were needed at this time.

Our decision
There are many more organisations that are active in the camps or squats (squats=unofficial camps). In many cases you can just show up and hope that they have some tasks for you where you can be helpful.
However, since we were in Greece only for a short time, we wanted to plan something ahead – to not end up wasting time looking for a suitable volunteering oppertuinity when we are there.
So, we contacted some of the organisations beforehand to find out where our support could be helpful. It turned out it was quite challending to find an organisation that is active during our planned time frame, most were having a break over Christmas and New year. The one that provided a positive answer to our request quite quickly was “Drop in the Ocean”. They offer a lot of diverse activities and were also okay with us volunteering for less than 2 weeks. On their website, each of us created an online account and “applied for a trip”. Everything was free and we all got approved within 24 hours.
Very professional. This impression was also confirmed when we finally were there and met the coordinators and the other volunteers. If you go there for only a short time frame, then you should usually expect to do mainly warehouse work. We were okay with that. But when we were there, we actually were able to do a lot more things despite warehouse work (e.g. clothes distributions, children acitivities, mother/baby activities, electrical installations, …).
We can very much recommend to volunteer for “Drop in the ocean”. But of course, it is never a mistake to also look for other opportunities.

Some words about costs
Please stay away from organisations that want to charge you to offer you volunteering opportunities. There are enough organisations that would love to have you in their team (without costs).
However, it is normal that volunteers are expected to organize and pay on their own for their required travel, accomodations and food needs.

 

Link list

Organisations:

More opportunities and general information sources:

Facebook Groups:

There are multiple facebook groups that are very helpful. Especially, the posts on the top (sticky posts) give a good and updated summary of the volunteer opportunities and links to further information documents that are very helpful.

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