Extracted from: https://www.facebook.com/RefugeesWelcomeGR/posts/1731879673741900

The phone line of the cooperative call service ‘Refugees to Refugees (R2R) Solidarity Call Center’ has begun to operate!

For three months now, refugees and people from the solidarity movement have been working cooperatively together, through open and democratic processes, in order to create a cooperative initiative that will provide information about transit, stay, or settlement in Greece, from refugees to refugees.

Thanks to the support of the hackborders team, the asterisk operator was recently set up and therefore the phone line for the call center is now ready!

This action will be an important milestone, because it is being developed by refugees themselves who speak the same language and have been through the same difficult experiences in transit. We hope that this can bring a level of trust and sincere collaboration among the people who contact and the people who work at Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

We want to coordinate and interact with numerous individuals and collective initiatives throughout Greece and abroad, to strengthen solidarity with refugees and migrants and to be able to respond to all the common struggles together. With the current situation that refugees are encountering where they are, both in refugee camps and outside, we as a Call Center project can help to strengthen cooperation and communication among people living in concentration and in isolation, away from the cities, the solidarity movement and each other, with limited access to vital information about the common struggles and related latest news.

This cooperative project is one of the initiatives that FairCoop Thessaloniki is supporting for building a fair economy ecosystem. Our vision and objective is the creation and networking of a truly fair and participatory economy from below, open to all the people without discrimination, building bridges between the refugees’ solidarity movement and the alternative economy movement, with experiences like the Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

The funds for the economic sustainability of the project, as well as for the equal distribution among the refugees working in this cooperative initiative, are coming from an international crowdfunding campaign for a collective fund that was created for the development of cooperative refugee initiatives, the Refugees Fund.”

Extracted from: https://coopfunding.net/en/campaigns/refugees-fund-faircoop/

Almost 3,000 people have lost their lives so far this year trying to reach safety in Europe. EU leaders cannot ignore this or turn their backs on its tragic consequences. After months of prevarication they still have not established a coordinated emergency response and have failed to fundamentally overhaul the failing asylum system. Now is the time for self-organized civil society to use direct action, and to directly support those in need. There is an urgent need for the provision of adequate and humane conditions for those arriving and to really help them to organize their lives for the long term in the new host countries.

REFUGEE FUND CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN.

Global governments, and especially the European Union, have shown their worst side with the events of recent times. Economic Rescue is being exchanged for popular sovereignty. Neoliberal control, wage and pension cuts, tax increases, layoffs and all kinds of privatization.

And governments, rather than give in to demands for democracy from citizens, use brutality to end their resistance. These are policies that sacrifice the interests of the majority to benefit the interests of a tiny minority.

Together with the sovereign and austerity crisis, we cannot forget the refugee crisis.

Almost 3,000 people have lost their lives so far this year trying to reach safety in Europe. EU leaders cannot ignore this or turn their backs on its tragic consequences. After months of prevarication they still have not established a coordinated emergency response and have failed to fundamentally overhaul the failing asylum system. Now is the time for self-organized civil society to use direct action, and to directly support those in need. There is an urgent need for the provision of adequate and humane conditions for those arriving and to really help them to organize their lives for the long term in the new host countries.

A new Faircoin fund for refugees.

This fund will focus on helping autonomous and self-managed projects involving refugees and solving their need to retain full control over the decisions made in their lives. For example new settlements, and the creation of productive and holistic initiatives with which they can fulfill their material and immaterial needs on a daily basis, while offering something useful to the society in which they find themselves.

Cooperative working initiatives can also be included, giving the newcomers an opportunity to become self-employed, beyond the control of states over their right to work. And of course grassroots solidarity movements who work on an open and participative basis can apply for their costs to be covered.

This proposal is also intended for those who have undergone forced displacement for economic and environmental reasons, and includes stateless people who are in the difficult situation of having no rights because of the behavior of their countries of origin or third countries that don’t recognize them as citizens.

The goal of this proposal is to get at least 500,000 Faircoins (the minimum amount to create a fund in FairCoop) towards the needs of refugees today in the world.

For this campaign you can pay with any currency, and the money received will be converted to Faircoin in order to be added to the fund.

Also you can yourself buy Faircoin (for example FairCoop offers https://getfaircoin.net) and so make your contribution in Faircoin.

Photos by Maliakos Nikos

Photo by United Nations Development Programme

The post Project Of The Day: Refugees to Refugees Solidarity Call Center appeared first on P2P Foundation.