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Refugee
rescue

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The increase in the number of refugee children of school age since 2000.

of refugees live in a country neighboring their country of origin.

The issue

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The countries hosting the most refugees are Turkey (3.7 million), ahead of Pakistan (1.4 million) and Uganda (1.2 million).

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 In Europe in 2018, less than 5% of the global resettlement needs were met.

 Greece is the third EU country receiving the most asylum claims. People come from Afghanistan, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Palestine, Iran.

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The highest percentage of people on the boats are women and children. A lot of very young children. We had a twelve days old baby the other day.

CHOSING HUMANITY

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We still need to fill the gaps that the authorities are not filling. And that&rsquo;s the sad reality, really, because we shouldn&rsquo;t have to be here at all, they should be doing what we&rsquo;re doing.

FILLING THE GAP

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There aren’t so many situations in Europe that create an environment for volunteers to come and help like this. I think it’s the first time that there is a humanitarian crisis on our doorstep. It’s more accessible, it’s easier. It’s directly involving our people and our countries and every single person in Europe has come into contact with or heard of migrants in their country, in their towns and villages. I think it’s directly involved everyone.

AT OUR DOOR STEPS

Mary's lessons learnt

Mary's lessons 
learnt

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These people come here and once they arrive in Europe, they have the rights, it&rsquo;s a human right, to be able to apply for asylum in the country that they land in. And then they can be resettled to another country in Europe. From all the arrivals that had come to greece, only 2.3% have been resettled to other countries in Europe. And people are waiting for years and years and years of their lives. Mostly sleep in camps. Waiting to be told whether they can go. There is that whole system of interviews.You could be waiting two years before you have your next interview. And all the while, they&rsquo;re not allowed to work, the children are not allowed to go to school. All these barriers that stop them from being able to live a normal life leads to a lot of mental health problems for them and difficulties for their children, because they&rsquo;re not being educated.

DEBUNKING THE NARRATIVE

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The work that we&rsquo;re doing is not only saving lives at sea. That&rsquo;s actual the physical work that we&rsquo;re doing, but the other side of it is the witnessing and the talking about what we&rsquo;re seeing here. Here, we are the eyes on the water. Without us, nobody would talk about what is happening here. In the central Mediterranean, without the NGO ships there, nobody would even know that these people are crossing. And there’s nothing we can do about it but tell the world. Without this work, nobody would talk about it. It wouldn&rsquo;t be on the news and the governments probably would just keep them out shut and not deal with it. So talking about it, exposing it, photos, interviews, anything we can get and, here as well, like taking our GoPros on every single rescue because if there is something dodgy going on, we’ve got the eyes to show the world. We have a responsibility to do that as well. And it&rsquo;s a huge one.

AN ACT OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE

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One of the biggest challenge is to understand that they&rsquo;re all fleeing for different reasons, and every reason is as valid as everyone else. Their countries are falling apart and that they need to get out. They’re not a threat to us. They’re simply people, like you and me. They simply want a better life. And to change the perspective on that is important. People have to understand that it could be us, at some point. We don&rsquo;t know, we don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s gonna happen in this world.

FIGHTING STEREOPTYPES

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It became the new normal. It became something that people saw so much, in the news, that it&rsquo;s just&#8230; it&rsquo;s still happening,and…nobody really cares anymore. People just close their mouth, turn their eyes away an let it happen, without any kind of understanding of how we&rsquo;re gonna deal with this. It&rsquo;s logical: if you see a lot of news about something over and over and over again, you just become numb to it and you don’t have so much- you sort of run out of empathy. That shock factor is gone. But it&rsquo;s not something that we can just turn a blind eye to and forget about.

FIGHTING INDIFFERENCE

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The issues we&rsquo;re facing are going to stick around. And we&rsquo;re going to have to end up dealing with them and if we don&rsquo;t start now things are you gonna get worst. And then it will be such a bigger problem to deal with later on that actually than if we start taking small steps now. I think that is partly why it&rsquo;s been so many young people starting to rise up against things and against these governements that&rsquo;s making stupid decisions.And I think it&rsquo;s a realization that is going to affect us all. All these different issues. I thing young people have started to realize the power of joining together.

IT IS IN FRONT OF US

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The society that we&rsquo;re living in is the cause of these situations and something that we&rsquo;ve become complacent with. We live in a capitalist society and we&rsquo;ve all just accepted that and allowed it to happen and actually quite often, it&rsquo;s profit over lives&#8230; The right actions aren&rsquo;t being made because the profits or the stakes are too high, the money is too big, the economics is too important to make the changes that we need to make. And it&rsquo;s the same here you know, the profits are too big and the smugglers are making huge amounts of money, it&rsquo;s business, it&rsquo;s economics, it&rsquo;s capitalism. It&rsquo;s everything that we&rsquo;re a part of actually, every single one of us is, whether we agree with it or not, we&rsquo;re a part of it because it&rsquo;s the system that we live in.

WE ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM

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It feels like I have a little bit of power, in my hands. It’s a dark world and there’s a lot of sadness, a lot of deaths and tragedies. You rescue all these people and we chat with them and we hear their stories and every single story is sad and they are fleeing all for completely different reasons and you just think, like, “how is this happening?” You feel quite helpless, it’s just really sad but you have to look at the bright side and the work that you’re doing and how many of those people wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t been there. And that’s what is important. And the welcome that you get from them as well, their gratitude and just the way they respond to it … you can’t help but smile. And the kids especially. You can’t even imagine being 5-years-old and crossing this water and crashing on the rocks and somebody coming and saving your life. I mean how is that going to impact them for the rest of their lives? It’s so hard to comprehend. And then they get off on the beach and you’re blowing up a balloon and playing games with them. Yes &#8230; often think about the kids and wonder, how that’s going to affect them for the rest of their lives.

Bigger Than Us

Refugee
rescue

The issue

26%

80%

Mary's lessons
learnt

52%

WHY FIGHTING FOR REFUGEES
IS IMPORTANT

Bonus

EXTRACT "BIGGER THAN US": THE MOBILIZATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN GREECE WITH MARY AND MELATI

EXTRACT "BIGGER THAN US": IN THE LIFEJACKET GRAVEYARD WITH MARY AND MELATI

The other
fights

Education for refugees

Environmental justice

Food security

Freedom of speech

Women's rights

Youth empowerment

Refugee rescue

The issue

26%

80%

Mary's lessons learnt

52%

WHY FIGHTING FOR REFUGEES IS IMPORTANT

Bonus

EXTRACT "BIGGER THAN US": THE MOBILIZATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN GREECE WITH MARY AND MELATI

EXTRACT "BIGGER THAN US": IN THE LIFEJACKET GRAVEYARD WITH MARY AND MELATI

The other fights

Education for refugees

Environmental justice

Food security

Freedom of speech

Women's rights

Youth empowerment

Refugee
rescue

Mary's lessons
learnt

WHY FIGHTING FOR REFUGEES
IS IMPORTANT

The other
fights