<\/p>\n
As many of you will know, myself and my friend Deirdre spent a week at the end of May working with the refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in the camp at Piraeus, near Athens.<\/p>\n
We were humbled by the generosity of parishioners and other friends in their support of our mission.\u00a0 I thought I would provide an update for this month\u2019s \u201cParish Matters\u201d to let you know how we got on.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know what a \u201crefugee\u201d would look like.\u00a0 I suppose I had some preconceived notions.\u00a0 The first lady we met \u2013 a beautiful 38 year old mother named Zahra from Syria \u2013 was pensively gazing out over the water as we arrived into camp.\u00a0 I was struck immediately, in my ignorance, at how \u201cnormal\u201d she looked.\u00a0 How articulate.\u00a0 How educated.\u00a0 She was a mother like all mothers.\u00a0 Anxiously chasing after little Yussuf as he tore around the compound.\u00a0 You\u2019re not supposed to have favourites, but we couldn\u2019t help ourselves.\u00a0 Zahra was a lady whom we bundled into a taxi later that week and attempted to get her into the embassy in Athens to get an appointment to plead for her transit to join her husband in Germany.<\/p>\n
We were also struck by the 26 year old IT Professional from Iraq, who speaks three languages and who wants to be an inventor.\u00a0 We were very touched by the 21 year old economics student from Syria who interpreted intelligently for us when we spoke to people with no English. A fantastic support to us was Ahmed, a member of the Syrian national football team \u2013 now a refugee – who sleeps in a tent by night and helps the volunteers make the tea by day.\u00a0 And we were devastated by the 21 year old who had walked for four months from Pakistan, who was deeply traumatised, who had his only possessions stolen from him overnight, and who had just received news that his niece had been killed back home.<\/p>\n
There is so much to tell, so much to write about, and so much work to be done.\u00a0 So much so, that Dee and I have made a decision that we need to go back there.\u00a0 So we are giving up our summer holidays this year and going to return to do what else we can to help.\u00a0 We are making it our mission to help these people.\u00a0 Our work must continue.<\/p>\n
We are hosting a talk at Robin Hill House in Cobh (Dee\u2019s home) on Tuesday 21st<\/sup> June at 8pm.\u00a0 We will share images and memories about our work with the refugees on that occasion, and we will talk about our future plans.\u00a0 Everyone is welcome to this gathering.<\/p>\n Finally, we\u00a0 need to raise further funds to do this effectively.\u00a0 The generosity of friends and family thus far has been incredible, but our efforts will continue.<\/p>\n My friend and I are very grateful to the Parishioners of Douglas Union for their interest and support.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Janet Dillon<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As many of you will know, myself and my friend Deirdre spent a week at the end of May working with the refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in the camp at Piraeus, near Athens. We were humbled by the generosity of parishioners and other friends in their support of our mission.\u00a0 I thought I would provide an update for this month\u2019s \u201cParish Matters\u201d to let you know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements","category-news","category-newsletters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1760,"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.douglas.cork.anglican.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}