Around 12,000 people have been evacuated from Moria camp since fire destroyed everything there. More than 4,000 of them are children, and more than 400 of those are extremely vulnerable unaccompanied or separated children.
Because SOS Children’s Villages has had a team working since 2015 in nearby Kara Tepe camp – an offshoot of Moria camp for the most vulnerable children – they were able to provide immediate support to those affected by the fire.
Many children and families had to endure several nights sleeping on the streets without access to any food or water. SOS teams therefore quickly started handing out basic supplies such as water, blankets, baby formula and nappies.
With no longer-term solution in sight, our teams will have to provide food and clean drinking water on an ongoing basis. SOS will provide basic hygiene kits to try to prevent the spread of disease, including the coronavirus. With the summer coming to an end, rain coats will be soon be essential and our teams plan to provide as many of those as they possibly can.
What our SOS colleagues do so brilliantly in an emergency is to try to bring back some structure and stability to lives that have been hit by chaos and uncertainty. So, longer-term, the team hopes to be able to set up some form of emergency education provision so the children there can have a sense of some normality and a chance to keep learning.
As it’s likely to take a long time to process and place the children who don’t have any parents, SOS has offered to take some of those children in until they have a longer-term solution.
All of these activities are at the heart of what SOS does, but it has come at an unexpected extra cost. If you would like to support our emergency fund which helps us react quickly when emergencies like Moria occur, please donate now.
SOS Children’s Villages believes that there should never be another Moria camp. It was only meant to be a temporary shelter while longer-term solutions were arranged, as our CEO Alison Wallace explains. We are joining forces with other organisations to ask the UK government to urgently help resettle child refugees from the Greek islands. You can help. You can give these children the chance of a future. Please email the Prime Minister now and sign the petition now.
