Acts of kindness
Throughout the swelling Syrian refugee crisis, we’ve read about countries closing their doors to the vulnerable, blocking their path with red tape, jeering at their arrival on foreign shores, beating and arresting those who sought a safe haven. But we have also seen many individuals around the world step forward to help, in ways large and small — gestures that have brought smiles to weary faces and restored some dignity to those who have suffered inhuman treatment. Here are some of those small stories of grace and generosity
VIENNA, AUSTRIA— A convoy of about140 cars left Vienna for Budapest this week, as part of a private initiative dubbed “Refugeeconvoy,” intended to pick up refugees and drive them to Western Europe. The aim, said activist Angelika Neuwirth, was to take them back to shelters in the Austrian capital. “I think this is my duty. I’m a mum, I’m a woman from Austria, and I can’t close my eyes anymore,” she said. “We are all human. No one is illegal.” The week before, four Austrian activists had been arrested for people smuggling but were later released. BBC
UPPSALA, SWEDEN— Rodan Ulusoy contacted a Swedish travel agency and asked for additional luggage allowance for an upcoming trip to Turkey. He then rallied friends for donations and came up with 20 kilograms’ worth of hygiene products, food, toys and candy, as well as $237 in cash. When the Swede reached Bodrum, Turkey, he distributed the donations to Syrians who were staying in nearby hostels. “The children were so happy to get toys. They said thank you a thousand times. The happiness in them was so touching,” he said. The Local
KOS, GREECE— In late August, a Greek former model named Sandra Tsiligeridu was enjoying a boat ride with her husband and daughter near the island of Kos. She suddenly spotted a man in the sea. She rescued a shaking and barely conscious Mohammed Besmar, a Syrian refugee who had struggled to stay afloat for 13 hours. He had been crammed on a rubber dinghy with 40 refugees heading for Kos when he jumped in the water to retrieve a paddle. Waves had made it impossible for him to get back on. “I’m not a hero,” said Tsiligeridu. “I did what anyone would have done in my place.” La Repubblica
MUNICH, GERMANY— National football league champions Bayern Munich will establish a training camp, in partnership with the city of Munich, for refugees. Children and youths from migrant families will be given German lessons and the opportunity to play football, receive meals and be fitted out with all the necessary football equipment. Bayern has also pledged € 1million in proceeds from a friendly match that will be donated to refugee projects. The Independent
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND— Thousands of Icelanders have signed an open letter on Facebook saying they are ready to welcome Syrian refugees after the island’s government said it would let in only a handful. Author and professor Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir urged her fellow Icelanders to speak out if they wanted Iceland to take in more Syrian refugees. The Facebook page is addressed to the country’s welfare minister and carries the slogan “Just because it isn’t happening here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.” Almost 18,000 people endorsed the letter (in a country with a population of only 330,000), many of them offering to take refugees into their own homes. “I’m a single mother with a 6-year-old son . . . We can take a child in need. I’m a teacher and would teach the child to speak, read and write Icelandic and adjust to Icelandic society. We have clothes, a bed, toys and everything a child needs. I would of course pay for the airplane ticket,” wrote Hekla Stefansdottir in a post. The Irish Times
MUNICH, GERMANY— Mathias Wendeborn, a pediatrician, has established an on-call practice in the Bayernkaserne, a former army barracks, together with 70 other doctors. They call themselves Refudocs. Their goal is to put an end to the conditions that last year turned the overfilled reception centre into a symbol for government failure. The Refudocs frequently see evidence of their patients’ hardships, Wendeborn says: “scars, poorly healed gunshot wounds, burns.” An asylum seeker recently came to see him with bloody feet, full of blisters and wounds. The man must have travelled hundreds of kilometres without proper shoes. Der Spiegel
KUMANOVO, MACEDONIA— Aleksandra Davidovska spent the last month on the border between Macedonia and Serbia, helping refugees from Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere get into Europe. Her normal working hours are spent as a shoe designer. After 5 p.m., she goes home, gets ready and heads for the border. She stays for hours, waiting for the trains to arrive. Davidovska, who belongs to a non-governmental organization called Legis, fills her car with water, bread, clothes and other items for the refugees. “These donations are all from citizens. They call me, or the people I work together with, and they bring us food, water and medicines,” she said. “Sometimes we don’t have a lot to offer them, but we’re doing our best.” Balkan Insight
MALMO, SWEDEN— Anders Holsteng, a teacher from Copenhagen, was one of many Danish and Swedish citizens who tried to help the hundreds of migrants attempting to illegally cross the Oresund bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo. Holsteng called in sick to work and drove a handful of Syrians to Malmo after giving them shelter overnight. “I believe it’s my duty to help people on the run,” he said. Yahoo News
BERLIN, GERMANY— Refugee Phrasebook is a project co-ordinated by a Berlin-based support group. It is an open collaborative project to provide basic, useful vocabulary to refugees, assembling key phrases from various fields. It currently contains vocabulary in 28 languages. The project is non-commercial and the books will be provided free with no political or personal branding.
BELGRADE, SERBIA— Nenad Popovic came back to Serbia to deal with a flood a year and a half ago, and stayed, because the flood, in a sense, has not stopped. First the flood was water; now it is people. Popovic’s family moved from Serbia to London around 1991, at the beginning of the civil war in what was then Yugoslavia. Now Popovic is a volunteer at the Refugee Aid Serbia donation centre in Belgrade. Here, a network of non-governmental agencies has been handing out food, drinks, toys and clothing in a collection of wooden sheds with corrugated metal roofs. One of the lead agencies at the compound is Sacuvajmo Bebe, or Save Babies, which provides medical care, formula, diapers and the like to the many babies being carried on the long and hazardous journey. The New York Times
BERLIN, GERMANY— A German group named Refugees Welcome has built an “Airbnb for Refugees.” It allows those in Germany, Austria, France and soon other Europeans to offer space in their homes to those fleeing conflict in Africa and the Middle East. The site suggests that anybody interested in getting involved consider micro-donations, crowdfunding and asking friends for support, as well as tapping government subsidies, as a way to pay for accommodations for their new guests.
GRANGESBERG, SWEDEN— The town’s animal shelter started a Facebook page to raise funds to bring a Syrian refugee’s cat to Sweden from Sicily, where it had been impounded after the woman arrived by sea. The 30-something woman, who lost a brother during her journey but survived along with a younger brother, said the return of the cat was her one wish. The animal shelter wants to raise more money for the cat because asylum seekers in Sweden get only a small daily allowance to cover their most basic needs. The Local
MALTA— Italian-American businessman Christopher Catrambone and his Italian wife, Regina, have invested about $8 million to buy a boat, hire a crew and conduct rescue operations in the Mediterranean. They founded Migrant Offshore Aid Station last year. Catrambone said he decided to start his rescue operations when confronted with the evidence of a shipwreck while on a cruise in Greece. NPR
SIEGEN, GERMANY— Anja Damerius has given up her semester break at the University of Siegen to co-ordinate a program for 50 refugee children who are living in the campus gymnasium. Two computer science PhD students brought laptops and tablets from their department to a makeshift Internet café set up in a red and white tent. The children can now watch music videos. In a corner, three Syrians of the more than 200 in the gym tried to reach their families via Skype and Facebook. When it finally worked, one of them wiped the tears from his face. Der Spiegel
TORONTO— Le Luong, a business consultant, came to Canada as a 6-year-old. Her family left Hanoi in1978, smuggled out on a fishing boat. They eventually arrived in Hong Kong, settling in a refugee camp for more than three years. Thanks to two church groups near London, Ont., Luong and her family became Canadians. Now she wants to repay that generosity and has launched a campaign among the Vietnamese community to sponsor a refugee family from Syria. Working with Lifeline Syria, Luong and her group hope they can raise enough money to eventually sponsor a number of families. “I’ve always been a big believer in paying it forward somewhere, somehow,” she said.
SZEGED, HUNGARY—“Over here! Food, water, no money!” A young man calls a busload of confused refugees over to a wooden shed in front of the grandiose yellowbrick edifice of the train station in the southern Hungarian border town of Szeged. The man is a volunteer at MigSzol (Migrant Solidarity) Szeged, a group organized on Facebook to offer direct assistance to refugees. When the 60 or so mostly Afghan and Syrian refugees arrive in the small square, the surroundings are bustling with local helpers. Some guide the tired newcomers to outdoor facilities where they can shave and wash their faces; others distribute halal sandwiches, fruit and bottled water. Many of the migrants struggle to believe what they are seeing. A Syrian man tries to pay for the food and until it sinks in that the assistance is free of charge. Deutsche Welle
LOWER SAXONY, GERMANY— In July, German movie star Til Schweiger began an online campaign to collect donated clothing for asylum seekers. When his Facebook page was bombarded with racist commentary, Schweiger ramped up his activism. Last month, he announced plans to back a privately funded refugee centre in the Harz Mountains of Lower Saxony. Together with a private investor, Schweiger intends to convert former military barracks into a showcase refugee centre with sports and recreational facilities, professional workshops and a sewing studio. The actor, who made his name in blockbuster German comedies and appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, has been relentless in his attacks on German “xenophobia and pure hatred” on social media. Der Spiegel
VIGO, SPAIN— Eliane Van Branteghem offered a room in the house she shares with her mother in response to the sadness they felt watching news of migrant tragedies. She is one of thousands of Spaniards who have responded to calls from mayors across the country to offer shelter to refugees. “We have spent the last few days watching the devastating footage of mothers, children and desperate people searching for a better future and many of them either perishing along the way or being rejected on arrival,” she said. “. . . We asked ourselves how we could do our bit. We live in a house with several rooms and we thought we could be that light of hope they are searching for. (We could) be a springboard to help them to integrate into a new country, a new world. We are all equal and our rights are the same; why shouldn’t we share what we have, just because we happen to be the lucky ones?” El Pais
TRAISKIRCHEN, AUSTRIA— Aytekin Yilmazer’s bash was a night to remember — both for him and for the hundreds of refugees who took up his invitation to celebrate his 37th birthday. Nobody sang “Happy Birthday.” There was no cake, no presents, and most of those attending were strangers. But both Yilmazer and the guests pouring into the grounds of a Turkish mosque near Austria’s main refugee collection centre, south of Vienna, showed no signs of missing the usual trappings of a birthday party. “I’m having dinner as actually every year at my birthday, with my friends,” the Turkish-born marketing specialist explained, as migrants formed two lines next to volunteers ladling out lentil soup, rice, vegetables and lamb stew. “This year I found 3,000 new friends at the refugee camp.” The Associated Press
OSLO, NORWAY— Norwegian hotel mogul Petter Stordalen has offered to house refugees free of charge in his Nordic Choice hotel chain. Stordalen says he’s ready to provide 5,000 overnight stays, in an offer presented to the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration. Nordic Choice has about 100 hotels in Norway. Like many European countries, Norway has seen a sharp rise in the number of asylum-seekers in recent months, with 2,313 people arriving in August — the highest monthly number since the Balkan wars in the 1990s. The Associated Press
ROME, ITALY— At the Baobab Cultural Centre, local volunteers welcome migrants every day. They make lunch, make dinner and answer any questions that the migrants may have. Volunteers also sort donated clothes, separating them by size and putting them on shelves for migrants. They welcome about 300 people daily — migrants who spend three or four days there before leaving, hoping to join relatives and friends in northern European countries. Liberties.eu
HANAU, GERMANY— Hagen Kopp, a warehouse worker, founded Alarm Phone in Hanau, in the central German state of Hesse. It is an unofficial emergency number that takes calls from refugees on the high seas who have become stranded on their odyssey to Europe. Desperate people call almost every day, usually from a satellite phone on the ship. Kopp and the other employees track down the responsible coast guard and ask for rescue boats to be dispatched. “We don’t let things rest until the refugees are safe,” he said. Der Spiegel
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN— Swedish tour operator Ving and Danish partner Spies are allowing tourists to take an additional 20 kilograms of goods with them to Greece so that the items can be distributed to refugees. Ving spokeswoman Charlotte Hallencreutz said that up to 500 passengers carrying more than 10 tonnes of supplies, including clothes, blankets and toys, have so far taken advantage of the offer. A truck carrying some of the donations has been driven to Greece, because there was not enough room on the tourist planes. The Local
BERLIN, GERMANY— When refugees began camping out on Berlin’s Oranienplatz square two years ago, a couple of students launched a project called Cooking Beyond the Plate’s Edge to cook for newcomers in the Berlin neighbourhood of Moabit. Now the project is such a hit, the founders have published a cookbook, hired a full-time organizer and formed a soccer team. A group of established refugees has joined the students and twice a month they have communal cooking nights, each featuring a refugee who cooks a menu from his or her home country. Der Spiegel
GREECE-MACEDONIA BORDER— Gabriela Andreevska is going out of her way to do something about the refugee crisis. Andreevska has been visiting refugees near the border, welcoming them with a smile and delivering bags of food and bottled water before sending them on their way. “I’m doing this because I have never seen so many people on the street . . . pregnant women, and babies, and sick old men,” she said. Al Jazeera English
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN— Swedish entrepreneurs and humanitarians who belong to the non-profit Refugee Air say they will fly Syrians “to safety before the first snow falls over Stockholm” this winter. Refugees without visas can’t travel by air due to carriers’ liability, an EU directive that makes the carriers financially liable for passengers who aren’t eventually granted asylum. “These policies push refugees into the hands of smugglers who take advantage of their desperation,” said Emad Zand, of Refugee Air. PR Newswire
MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY— One hundred children orphaned by the Syrian civil war could find a home in former Uruguayan president Jose (Pepe) Mujica’s summer retreat — “a mansion and riverfront estate sur- rounded by rolling pastures,” according to Yahoo News. That would be a welcome sight for any of the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by Syria’s political turmoil. The children could arrive as early as September, coming from refugee camps in the Middle East.
SODERTALJE, SWEDEN— Sodertalje, a town that took in more Iraqi refugees after the Gulf War than the U.S. and Canada combined, is now taking in thousands of Syrian refugees. Mayor Boel Godner told the BBC, “It’s the right thing to do, even if it’s difficult sometimes. Everyone should do it.” Half the town’s population is foreign-born. BBC
CALAIS, FRANCE— At the French camp for refugees known locally as the Jungle, near the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, teachers are volunteering to teach French in a school built by refugees. Quartz Media
DRESDEN, GERMANY— Two Dresden writers showed solidarity with refugees by painting “welcome” in Arabic on the side of a train carriage in the city, hitting back against racism and xenophobia. Huck magazine
KALMAR, SWEDEN— In an effort to help refugees integrate, the Swedish migration board — together with local councils and a regional bus carrier — is offering asylum seekers free bus passes. The move will allow refugees, who live in large accommodation centres usually on the outskirts of towns, to venture outside of their communities. The Independent
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY— One day last week, Veronika Nemes-Jeles, who runs a Facebook group organizing help for the refugees, handed out games and planned activities for children stuck at the train station in the Hungarian capital, as their families waited to travel westward. Andras Bolcsfold, also a volunteer, handed out food and water to refugees passing through his country. Al Jazeera America
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT.— Jeremy Enns, a resident of Niagara-on-the Lake, decided it was time to take action in March and participated in a fundraising campaign to raise money for the Mennonite Central Committee’s efforts for Syrian refugees. The campaign raised more than $100,000 and sent more than1,000 relief kits to Latakia, Syria, which just arrived this week. “It wasn’t a question of why I would do this, but why wouldn’t I do this,” he said.
BERLIN, GERMANY— Hilde Schramm — the 79-year-old daughter of Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer — has spent a life campaigning for peace, fighting racism, and supporting Germany’s green movement. Schramm has been sharing her home, her kitchen and bathroom for eight months now with two Syrian refugees, Nizar and Ahmad. For Schramm it seemed the logical thing to do, as the country’s reception centres struggle to cope with the influx of refugees and migrants. BBC
“It’s the right thing to do, even if it’s difficult sometimes. Everyone should do it.” BOEL GODNER MAYOR OF SODERTALJE, SWEDEN, WHICH IS TAKING IN THOUSANDS OF SYRIAN REFUGEES
PICKERING— For Aimee Esparaz, a Pickering resident, there wasn’t any choice but to get involved, especially after she saw the photo of Alan Kurdi, the 3-year-old boy found dead on a beach in Turkey. Now she finds herself the co-ordinator of a resettlement committee for two GTA churches: the Meeting House Richmond Hill and the Meeting House Uptown. The plan is for them to sponsor two families from Syria.
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN— A young boy carrying a sign that said “Welcome refugees” was just one of many Swedes who greeted refugees this week with clothes, food, coffee and water at Stockholm’s central train station. Also in the crowd was Sahar Zamani, who lined up with a dozen other volunteers mobilized through a Facebook campaign. The refugees “were scared, they thought we were police . . . but we just told them we were here to help and gave them food and drinks,” said Zamani. “There are no words to explain what these people have gone through,” she said. Sweden, which in 2013 became the first country in Europe to grant automatic residency to Syrian refugees, is the goal for thousands of migrants, who ignore a European regulation that stipulates they must apply for asylum in the first country they land in. Germany has waived that regulation. BBC
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA— After Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the country would take 12,000 Syrian refugees, citizens began offering to help resettle migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East. “As Australians, in our DNA we have this inherent want to kick in and get things done,” said Mark Stanley, a Melbourne resident who called in to a local radio show to offer up a room in his house, the Australian Associated Press reported.
DUMFRIES, SCOTLAND— The home of Scottish national poet Robert Burns has opened its heart to Syrian refugees. The local charity Dumfries and Galloway Refugee Action posted a request for donations on Facebook last week and since then has been overwhelmed with offers of aid and food. That first appeal has led to 30 collection points being set up in the area. A dozen people are now co-ordinating relief efforts and local businesses are even throwing in free pizza to feed hungry volunteers. Everything collected — from clothes to non-perishable items — will be driven down to a refugee camp in Calais, France. Daily Record
TORONTO— Most humanitarian and resettlement agencies have seen a surge in donations from Canadians across the country. Just one organization, the Mennonite Central Committee, has received more than $200,000 in pledges in little over a week. The response has been astronomical, charity insiders say. Moses Moini, who himself came to Canada as a refugee in1992 from Sudan, works as a refugee advocate at the organization. “Last week (when the photo of the body of Alan Kurdi was beamed around the world) was indeed a turning point that saw Canadian compassion and generosity pour out in a way I’ve never experienced.”
KEMPELE, FINLAND— Millionaire telecommunications entrepreneur and Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila has offered his home in Kempele, northern Finland, to Syrian refugees. Sipila has asked Finns to open their hearts, stop hate speech and make people in need feel welcome. “We should all take a look in the mirror and ask how we can help,” he said, according to Reuters.
TORONTO— Naomi Alboim, chair of the policy forum at Queen’s University School of Policy Studies, and Congregation Darchei Noam were so moved by the refugee crisis that they decided to step forward to sponsor a Syrian family in late July. Alboim, who is on the board of Lifeline Syria, and others at the synagogue formed a committee to work on the plan and within weeks had raised more than $30,000. Working with Jewish Immigrant Aid Services, the congregation is expecting to send off the paperwork to sponsor a family of five who have relatives in Toronto.
INGELHEIM, GERMANY— This summer, 100 local volunteers, together with the German Red Cross, built an encampment next to the police station in the middle of the town of 24,000. They erected three massive tents — two housing 75 beds each, one for meals. They cleared 1,500 tonnes of earth, laid down gravel, and relocated electric cables and water conduits to supply the area. The town is now home to 1,200 refugees. A group of local volunteers has organized a massive clothing drive. Missing items are size small for men — the refugees don’t have the Germans’ girth. Die Welt
KILKENNY, IRELAND— Irish couple Gus and Elinor Mountain travelled to Kos, Greece, last week to give a local charity group money to buy tents for Syrian refugee families marooned on the island. Kilkenny residents are holding a number of events to raise money and goods for migrants, including a quiz pub night, a fundraising concert and a candlelight vigil. Kilkenny People
LONDON, ENGLAND— Jasmine O’Hara saw the images of desperate refugees in Calais, France, so she decided to grab her brother and head to France to see if they could help. She founded the group CalAid to support the nearly 4,000 people in the Calais camp. Word of CalAid spread on Facebook and now an army of volunteers are filling bags with donations of second-hand goods. IRIN
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY— When Magdolna Rozsa heard that thousands of refugees were being held up at the central railway station in Budapest, she marched down to see if she could help. She set up a chair and began giving free haircuts to stranded children. She said she did it to provide a little bit of comfort and humanity in contrast to the reception the refugees were getting from Hungarian authorities. Hungarian Free Press
TEHRAN, IRAN— Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian is donating part of a $150,000 Dutch award for her photojournalism work to a charity helping Iraqi and Syrian refugees. “It is hard for me to enjoy this prize as much as I would like to, seeing the region where I work and live in flames and tens of thousands seeking refuge in faraway lands,” Tavakolian said on Facebook, according to Agence France-Presse.
SWEDEN— In January, Fredrik Onnevall, a Swedish reporter for state-owned Sveriges Television, was covering a story in Greece when a 15-year-old Syrian begged him to “save him from the situation he was in.” The youth was attempting to escape the country by jumping on a moving truck. Onnevall and his crew smuggled the boy by train into Sweden, where the youth was reunited with family. He now has permanent residency and is in school. The Local
LESBOS, GREECE— In June, NPR reported that Eric Kempson, a 60-year-old Briton, rose every morning at 5 a.m., drove to a rocky peak overlooking a beach near his home on Lesbos and scanned the sea with binoculars. When he spotted boats of migrants — and there were several most days — Kempson alerted local Greek-Australian restaurateur Melinda McRostie, who prepared food and drink for them with contributions made by sympathetic locals.
KOS, GREECE— A Dutch tourist in Kos used his twoweek holiday to help distribute food to refugees at the Captain Elias hotel. He joined a group led by hotel owner Reinhilde Michalakopoulos, a German who moved to Kos in1989 to join her Greek husband. Now, she runs the Kos Palace hotel with her son and many tourists who stay there leave behind money, clothes and toiletries for distribution to migrants. The Guardian
TORONTO— A day after the photo of Alan Kurdi appeared in the Star, the law firm Goldblatt Partners LLP — partners and staff — announced it would privately sponsor a Syrian family. “Goldblatt Partners LLP is responding to the ethical, moral and legal imperative felt by Canadians to take action in respect of the greatest refugee crisis since World War II,” says Marlys Edwardh, a senior lawyer at the firm.
ROME, ITALY— Sacro Cuore di Gesu al Castro Pretorio, a Roman Catholic parish near the city’s central railway station, is well known among refugees and migrants looking for shelter and food. Every evening after the worshippers are gone, priests let those in need inside the church, where they are usually fed before they sleep safely under the gilded ceilings. The Daily Beast
ST. CATHARINES, ONT.— Valerie Whitt, a 43-year-old resident of St. Catharines, has been donating money and buying relief supplies for Syria, Iraq and Lebanon through a charitable agency for some time. She did disaster relief and rebuilding work in Kosovo. “When I was working with war widows in Kosovo, I saw how much impact relief supplies have on refugees . . . The joy and comfort that these very basic supplies brought to these widows and families was humbling and inspiring. I know the displaced and the refugees are experiencing many of the same feelings,” she said.
VENETO, ITALY— When migrants started coming to this region, its people were helpful, even welcoming. So when a freak tornado, with winds of almost 300 kilometres per hour, ripped through the outskirts of Venice in July, destroying many homes, those migrants came back to help. In the towns of Mirano and Padua, they helped firefighters re-lay bricks and clean up the streets. The Daily Telegraph Compiled by Raveena Aulakh, Debra Black, Naomi Buck, Jim Coyle, Marina Jimenez, Tanya Talaga and Patty Winsa