Working towards greater safety in the Olive Groves
Safety is a basic human need and right. Everyone deserves to feel safe and out of harms way. But for the people living in camps on the Greek islands, their feeling of safety is more than often compromised.
Over the past months, we have seen and been alerted to more and more safety issues around Moria camp, in particular. Concerned about this rise, we decided to work closely with the residents of the Olive Groves to implement some basic safety mechanisms.
The lack of lighting in the evenings was causing great concern, so we installed floodlights across the Olive Grove campUs. These powerful lamps help to illuminate the vast and densely populated landscape by night, making it safer for women and children in particular to travel to areas like the wash units.
The outbreak of fires have also been a pressing issue, with flames recently sweeping across both Vathy camp on Samos and Moria camp on Lesvos. In reaction, we have fire prevention methods around the Olive Groves by setting up easily accessible fire extinguisher posts. If a fire were to start, these fire extinguishers are now readily available to stop an outbreak.
By all means, these mechanisms do not ensure the complete safety of the Olive Groves, as there is still great work to be done. However, they are an important step in the journey towards creating a greater feeling of safety for the Olive Grove community.
A special thanks to our partners including Choose Love for helping us make this possible.