By: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director

The LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece is a buzzing hive of activity where we provide myriad therapeutic psychosocial services that provide structure, opportunities to progress, and healing. Many people are unfamiliar with exactly what we do there, so here are 6 fast facts about the program that explain it a little more:

Here I am doing some acro-yoga with Virginia, our awesome arts and recreation volunteer!

We don’t run a refugee camp! Rather, we run a community center next to two refugee camps (Greece runs the camps with funding from the United Nations). The second camp only opened a couple of months ago, the first just over 3 years ago. We’ve been providing services since the very beginning.
All of the 1,000+ residents of the camps are Yazidi, an ethnic/religious minority who experienced genocide. Most of them will eventually relocate to Germany or The Netherlands, but it takes years of waiting.
The Center’s main focus is providing psychosocial support, which “helps individuals and communities to heal the psychological wounds and rebuild social structures after an emergency or a critical event,” (UNICEF). Psychosocial support is just as important as critical as crisis response.
Our psychosocial services are based on UN recommendations and include English and German classes, a designated women’s space, a children’s space, group music classes, fitness and trauma-informed yoga for both men and women, drama-therapy activities, community events, opportunities to volunteer as an official part of our volunteer team, and more.
Hundreds of Yazidis attend our daily services. Their feedback is that while they’re at the Center, they don’t think about their trauma. They focus on taking advantage of any way to progress, to grow in knowledge, to be part of something, and enjoying the support of independent volunteers who are there just for them.
We also distribute much needed aid. Many refugees go without, simply because they don’t have the means to provide for themselves. We distribute bulk dry foods (flour, oil, sugar), summer and winter clothing for each refugee in the two camps, diapers, feminine hygiene items, and also personal hygiene items.