Samos Campaign 2025

Equipped with the (incredible) €12,000 half marathon donations, Project ELPIDA set off to Greece on May 5, 2025 for the annual Samos campaign. This year we first visited our partners at Just Action before traveling to our partners Self M.aid and Samos Volunteers in the following days. We also visited our partners I have Rights and the Human Rights Legal Project Samos, who both offer legal aid for refugees.

The situation on Samos is still precarious for refugees. On the second day of the campaign, we visited the “old” camp on Samos, where up to 7000 people were accommodated until 2021 instead of the planned 600. Despite political promises, the situation has hardly improved since then. No camp is safe! This also applies to the “new” camp on the island.

Last year, for example, we provided our partner organizations with food and soap, which was made available to the people in the CCAC at no cost. So while the Free Shops and the Community Center were able to continue operating thanks to your support, the situation in the camp has continued to deteriorate. There are reports from the camp of moldy food and a lack of hygiene products. Even the “new” camp does not provide even the basic necessities of life under conditions similar to detention.

Our partner organizations continue to work tirelessly against this trend. To make this support more accessible, we were initially able to provide the people in the camp with 1000 bus tickets. Free shops and community center are now much easier to reach. In total, for example, we were able to provide over 69 liters of washing-up liquid, more than 300 kg of washing powder and 1530 bars of olive soap from Soapfactory Samos. In addition, 760 diapers and 1848 sanitary pads and 201 tubes of toothpaste. At the Samos Volunteers Community Center, for example, we not only financed 773 slippers for the free store, but also a basketball hoop and a changing mat. We supported the legal aid organizations that help refugees to leave the island and obtain the necessary papers, for example with a year's supply of printer ink and paper.

All of this is only possible thanks to your generous support and we would like to thank you once again especially for the many generous donations for the half marathon. It is only thanks to this support that we can counteract the permanent cuts in state humanitarian aid and make life a little better for the people of CCAC Samos!

This wraps up this years Samos Campaign. We have immense gratitude towards our partners that work relentlessly day in and day at Europe’s external borders. While the migration discourse in the EU is focussing on border sealings and deportations, they show us what real solidarity looks like. Thank you!