Serres Beginnings
by: Hayley Smith, LHI Founder/Director
As we prepare to reopen the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece (with team members quarantining for two weeks first and lots of regulations in place to keep the Yazidi refugees safe from the virus), we are reminded of everything we had to go through to open it in the first place. We hit many roadblocks and overcame many obstacles. But our determination won out. We kept going. Here’s the story…
LHI Founder/Director Hayley Smith stands in an abandoned dinghy that likely carried 40–50 refugees across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece.
In 2016, an independent humanitarian couple came across a large group of Yazidi refugee families living in a field in northern Greece, with only sparse amounts of food and water and the clothing on their backs. The families were there for a number of complicated reasons and were soliciting the Greek government for safety. They are survivors of multiple horrors: the 2014 genocide; dangerous smuggling to safety in Turkey; terrifying trip across the Aegean in a flimsy dinghy to Greece; and then to top it off, persecution by those who ought to protect them the most.
Molly and Kyle at the grand opening of the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece.
This couple, Molly and Kyle, would become the first directors of the LHI Northern Greece program when LHI funded water and fresh food for this large group of people. Since that humble start in 2016, we committed ourselves to following the Yazidi refugees wherever they went. And whatever the circumstances, if they weren’t going to give up, then neither were we. We kept going.
Eventually, they were settled in a camp in Serres, Greece. At first, we were only allowed to operate our distributions and language and yoga classes out of a tiny tent in an isolated corner of the camp. Conditions were far worse than ideal: the tent would flood, or the ground would get muddy. The living conditions were no better. No matter what, we kept going.
Before LHI’s Refugee Center opened, English was taught to Yazidis inside a small tent in a remote corner of the Serres camp.
At one point, they shut down the camp to clean it up and replace the tents with isobox container homes. The entire Yazidi population of the camp was moved to a city 75 kilometers away. We could have thrown in the towel, but instead we packed up our team, relocated with the refugees, and lived in a cramped motel for 3 months while we continued our classes and distributions. Despite the inconvenience, we kept going…
Next week, Hayley will continue the story about how the LHI Refugee Center in Serres, Greece got its start. To read it now, click here.
Click here to learn more about our work in Serres and support the LHI Refugee Center.