Gender Equality Greece Project #48306

Irida: Safe space for 650 women at risk in Greece

by Irida Women's Center

Project Report | Mar 29, 2021
Find Out The Great Impact Your Love Has On Irida

By Lydia Siapardani | Head of Media & Advocacy

Drawing class led by a community member

Dear supporter,

In a year full of unprecedented challenges and life-changing events, we achieved to keep our community alive and growing, saw our project blooming, and women from our community thriving.

For Ιrida Women's Center, the pandemic forced our safe space for 475 women to close twice and heavily affected our community, refugee, asylum-seeking, and migrant women, and young girls.

However, thanks to your invaluable support, Irida was able to continue providing vital support by expanding our protection services and establishing online programming. Thanks to your support, vulnerable women continued having access to food and other necessities, while they did not miss their access to education. And our family feels grateful.

Within a year, from March 2020 to March 2021:

We did 229 interventions, providing refugee and asylum-seeking mothers with children with food items and other necessities. Inside info: In March 2021, we supported more than 90 families with the provision of food items based on their unique needs.
We supported 43 pregnant women
We covered the expenses of 95 essential medical appointments and purchased medication for 75 cases
We did 479 interventions, providing legal counseling and support to refugee and asylum-seeking women.

Furthermore, kicking off the new year, we established an online Etsy shop, Women Without Barriers, in collaboration with Beyond Words International. In our Etsy shop, you can find creations handmade by women of our community. This is an amazing opportunity for refugee women to generate income-opportunities as the profits of the shop go directly to the artists.

Last but not least, we managed to reach one of our ultimate goals - seven community members felt empowered and confident enough to take over key positions in the project. Now, 50% of our paid staff is women with lived experience.

We know that this year has been difficult for all of us—but if you’re able to give, your compassion will support more women to heal their traumas and rebuild their lives. Εvery action of love can go a long way and have a great impact. Support refugee women here!

Thank you for your solidarity! Stay safe and strong until our next report,

With love,

Lydia Siapardani

Haifa and Atefe take over our Child-Friendly Space

From the Cooking project

Links:

Read our Annual Report for 2020

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