Lynn's Thanksgiving In Lesvos
- by XpatAthens
- Friday, 06 November 2015
I’ve decided to go back to Lesvos for American Thanksgiving because the reports coming from the island continue to be extremely disturbing. Several friends expressed interest in going with me so we’ve formed a group to go together. Yeehaw! Life is always better in teams.
Our plan is to help address some of the basic shortages, particularly with the fact winter is coming. We’re researching viable options including tent structures, emergency blankets, jackets, waterproofing, etc.
We’ll go with at least two vehicles and our supplies by ferry to arrive in Lesvos on November 25th. We’ll stay through the 29th. While there, we’ll probably spend most of our time either on the beaches or in the camps of Moria/Kara Tepe, depending on where we feel we can do the most good. This may change as the needs and situation changes.
My brother and his family made a donation that we’ll use to buy our initial shelter supplies. We aren’t formally fundraising as we aren’t a non-profit organization but we are giving people the opportunity to join in by sending us donations if they are so inclined. For those of you who didn’t know me before the current yoga instructor era, for many years before that I was a high tech and venture capital chief financial officer. So while we may not be the most qualified to take donations, we’re probably not the least qualified either. Our commitment is that 100% of any donations go directly to help the refugees. Please contact us directly if you’d like to donate.
We’ll be posting updates here as we kick the project off.
And for anyone reading, I’ll add that before I went to Lesvos for a weekend in September, I hadn’t actually done anything to help with the crisis. I point that out just to say if you haven’t done anything to help, don’t feel guilty. We are all a bit confused about how to get involved….
For me the evolution was: do nothing–> read the news/see the pictures of the crisis and start feeling kind of terrible–> walk around wondering if I can/should be doing something to help–> make some attempt to do something helpful (in my case go to Lesvos for a weekend, unsure if that was even going to be useful…)–> refine the effort and offer some more meaningful help. You are probably somewhere on that continuum…. And this might be your moment.