Head of Field Unit, Αthens
How would you describe your work?
My work as Head of the Field Unit in Athens consists of coordinating a team of talented colleagues to help as many refugees as possible to access the information and assistance they need. Our team covers Southern Greece, an area hosting – especially in and around Athens – many refugees and asylum-seekers. Some have just arrived in the country and are looking for help with their most basic needs, like food, accommodation and legal documents. Others have been in Greece for years and are well into the process of integrating into the local community, through studying, working or opening businesses.
Regardless of when they arrived, refugees often face challenges in accessing services or exercising their rights. My job is to ensure that my team cooperates effectively with other entities – including NGOs, municipalities and refugee communities – to find solutions to these challenges. This can involve providing recently arrived asylum-seekers with information about the legal procedures they will go through, referring vulnerable individuals to organizations that can help them, identifying bureaucratic barriers and suggesting possible solutions, or connecting refugees with job opportunities.
What made you decide to become a humanitarian worker?
My interest in asylum developed during law school, when I took a course on refugee law taught by a brilliant professor who also worked for UNHCR. His fascinating lectures fuelled my curiosity about the plight of people forced to flee, a topic I knew little about but found intriguing, as Milan, my hometown, was at the time a transit point for asylum-seekers entering Europe through the Central Mediterranean.
The decision to become a humanitarian worker, however, came in 2015, when, as a volunteer, I witnessed firsthand the extraordinary resilience of asylum-seekers reaching the Greek islands, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the efforts of the humanitarians there to help. Since then, I have embarked on a professional journey that brought me to work with forcibly displaced people in Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and Afghanistan, before returning to Greece at the end of 2020.
Share with us a story from your work in the field, that has been engraved on your mind forever.
An aspect of this work that never ceases to amaze me is the resourcefulness and solidarity that many refugees demonstrate despite the numerous difficulties and risks they face. Every week provides me with fresh examples, but a recent one that stands out is that of an Afghan couple who had to wait for several weeks in a refugee camp close to Athens to receive their documents. Both were teachers in their country of origin and, upon learning that, at the time, there were no activities for children in the camp, they spontaneously started offering informal lessons. They turned their own bedroom into a classroom by day, using the metallic walls – easy to clean – as whiteboards. With very limited tools at their disposal, they helped many children make the most of those weeks in limbo. Community-led initiatives and acts of generosity like this, of which I have witnessed countless forms, are to me a constant reminder of the huge potential and skills of refugees, and of the importance of UNHCR’s work in supporting them.
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