refugees

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Date Posted: 08/09/2016
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Launch of the phone line of the cooperative Call Center from Refugees to Refugees (R2R)!

The phone line of the cooperative call service ‘Refugees to Refugees (R2R) Solidarity Call Center’ begins to operate on Thursday 8th September!

For three months now, refugees and people from the solidarity movement have been working cooperatively together, through open and democratic processes, in order to create a cooperative initiative that will provide information about transit, stay, or settlement in Greece, from refugees to refugees.

Thanks to the support of the hackborders team, the asterisk operator was recently set up and therefore the phone line for the call center is now ready!

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This action will be an important milestone, because it is being developed by refugees themselves who speak the same language and have been through the same difficult experiences in transit. We hope that this can bring a level of trust and sincere collaboration among the people who contact and the people who work at Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

We want to coordinate and interact with numerous individuals and collective initiatives throughout Greece and abroad, to strengthen solidarity with refugees and migrants and to be able to respond to all the common struggles together.

With the current situation that refugees are encountering where they are, both in refugee camps and outside, we as a Call Center project can help to strengthen cooperation and communication among people living in concentration and in isolation, away from the cities, the solidarity movement and each other, with limited access to vital information about the common struggles and related latest news.

This cooperative project is one of the initiatives that FairCoop Thessaloniki is supporting for building a fair economy ecosystem. Our vision and objective is the creation and networking of a truly fair and participatory economy from below, open to all the people without discrimination, building bridges between the refugees’ solidarity movement and the alternative economy movement, with experiences like the Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

The funds for the economic sustainability of the project, as well as for the equal distribution among the refugees working in this cooperative initiative, are coming from an international crowdfunding campaign for a collective fund that was created for the development of cooperative refugee initiatives, the Refugees Fund.

We call upon all the individuals and groups of the solidarity movement at local and global levels to contribute to the ‘Coopfunding’ campaign and to support the economic sustainability of the cooperative Refugees to Refugees Call Center. The expenses of the cooperative are around 1500 euros monthly and the funds received until now will be finishing this September.

More support is needed. In the following link you can see the progress of the campaign so far, contribute (in euros or faircoins) and share the coopfunding campaign with your solidarity networks!

 

Visit our website and facebook page for more information:

callcenter.coop

Fb: Refugees to Refugees R2R Solidarity Call Center (included emergencies any time)

The number of the phone line for the call center is: +302311180903

Timeline: 09.00 to 16.30 (work time)  16.30 to 21.00 (only emergency calls)

Saturday:  (only emergency calls)

In solidarity, the group of the cooperative R2R Call Center Ramez, Yaya, Jalal, Aveen & comrades

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Date Posted: 04/05/2016
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Refugees Fund 1st Assembly

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(assembly notes published at https://fair.coop/news-from-the-refugees-fund-assembly)

On this past Tuesday 27th of April, the First Faircoop Refugees fund open assembly took place, and took some important decisons.

At the time of the meeting there was a total of 4031,84 euros in the campaign fund. From this, 2070 has been received in Euros, and the rest in Faircoin.

The following decisions were taken:

1) 300 euros was reserved to be spent by 4 refugee comrades, 3 living in Thessaloniki and 1 in Athens willing to attend the “1st Gathering of the Solidarity economy and Integral Cooperativism” which will happen in Karditza, (Central Greece,) from the 5th to the 8th of May. (see here: http://cooperativas.gr/1st-gathering-of-solidarity-economy-and-integral-cooperativism-in-greece/ )

2) The remaining 1770 euros and the Faircoin received so far was reserved for the Call Center Coop Network project, to be spent by the refugees involved, who are preparing the launch of the refugees2refugees service.
(more info about that project here: https://titanpad.com/callcenterscoopnetworkdoc )

This project would make socially positive uses of the infrastructures that are being created by the cooperative network of call centres which is a project by Freedom Coop, the European cooperative being built by FairCoop.

Refugees2refugees will be one of the call center sevices where refugee coopworkers will carry out support tasks via online chat and phone for other colleagues in need of help. This can work for any country for support related to how to earn a living or find housing etc. together with any need of info related to people in transit.

This service will be an important milestone, because it will be staffed by people who are equals to those being given support, who speak their languages and have lived through the same difficult experiences in transit. This will bring a level of trust and true collaboration with the people who contact refugees2refugees.

The refugees working on this project will be paid as cooperative members using contracts between the Call Center Cooperative and private clients who need the service. While they are online awaiting calls, they will be able at same time to cover the needs of the refugees2refugees project.

The Freedom Coop’s legal platform will be used to make these economic activities possible.

Refugees2refugees is strategic as a starting point for the refugees fund, because it allows for a communication flow between people who will be able to participate in other projects that we can fund further on. This will make the process easier, and will give a great opportunity to build more and more refugee-run projects as money flows to the Refugees fund.

The participants in the project will meet at the Karditza Gathering to begin their developments.

Apart from this, from the discussion it became clear that the money currently available isn’t enough to cover the project’s needs. Therefore all the participants commited to continue raising more money for the Refugees Fund.

Also, a proposal for facilitating the use of faircoin by refugees will be developed in the alternative economy and social currency theme to be debated at Karditza.

Let’s go on sowing seeds and grow more cooperative projects with the Refugees Fund!