The Refugee Crisis

The thing is, we need to define what we mean by crisis. It's a crisis for the people involved.
For our country, and for Europe, it's a disgrace; of which I am deeply, deeply ashamed.

These are the words of one of our close family friends - extended family, really. She went out to Thessaloniki with my daughter, Ruby, this summer. These are her thoughts.

"My name is Jaime, I was born in 1997 in Cornwall where I grew up. When the refugee crisis hit Europe, I (like many) was hit with the feeling of utter helplessness and frustration. I didn’t know who from the media I should be listening to, and that made it difficult to connect with the situation. I felt like a lot of people around me were shutting off, closing their eyes and pretending it wasn’t happening                                                 to all these thousands of innocent people.

On June 16th this year I decided to volunteer with a small, local NGO based in Thessaloniki in Northern Greece, where a lot of refugees have been placed after the camps in Idomeni (near the Macedonian border) were evacuated at the end of May. I tried to scribble down as much as possible in an attempt to translate what I was seeing and feeling, however a lot of the time it was impossible to focus my thoughts. I plan to create some proper work really soon, but in the meantime here are some pages directly from my experience; raw, unedited and painful. I hope you can take something from them.

Thank you for reading…"

Click on each image to enlarge and see the whole page of Jaime's diary. As she says, it's unedited, and raw - and moving.

If you want to find out more about what we the people of Cornwall are doing, you can start here:

www.cornwallamillionactsofsanctuary.com