Refugees Turn Life Vests Into Handbags On Lesvos

They are a poignant symbol of Europe’s refugee crisis: Mountains of life vests strewn on the beaches of Lesvos, and piled high at dumps on the Greek island that doesn’t know what to do with them.

Now some of those refugees are working on a solution.

A group of volunteers at a refugee shelter on the island has launched a project to make handbags, totes, and messenger bags out of the brightly colored vests, hoping to raise money for charity efforts on the island.

At a tiny makeshift workshop, Afghan tailor Yasin Samadi works with a sewing machine to make a small orange dispatch bag, as children and other curious onlookers wander in and out, drawn by the bursts of noise from the machine.

"If there’s work here, I will stay here," says the 27-year-old from Kabul, who’s been living with his family at the shelter, known as the PIKPA camp, for 18 months. "If not, we'll need to leave."

Lesvos has been at the center of the refugee crisis that escalated dramatically last year. More than 500,000 refugees and other migrants arrived to the island in 2015, nearly half the total number of people who traveled to Europe.

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