Organising partner: ACP In cooperation with Stand by Me Lesvos.
Type of event: Workshop

The workshop took place in Kara Tepe Registration and Identification centre in Lesvos in cooperation with Stand by me Lesvos in July 2021.

Overall aim and target audience of the event:

The aim of the event was to inform young refugees who live in the RIC of Karatepe about circular economy, to enhance their knowledge about the environment, to provide tools to them to carry on activities in the centre and to establish a permanent forum of discussion between the young people, the organizations working in the field ,the local community within the RIC centre and the locals in the island of Lesvos.

The were almost twenty young people all of them men except one girl.

Outcome of the SWOT analysis run together with key stakeholders

Strengths
-young people involved with lots of good ideas
-there is something that they can be involved, and their voice will be heard
-bottom-up procedure
-they decide what is best for their community

Weaknesses
-language barrier (most of the participants do not speak Greek, so we used interpreters)
-people face big survival problems and they do not pay attention to the topic
-only men involved, women did not show interest
-people were not informed well (need to translate information)
they do not know how long will stay in the hotspot so they might not be involved

Opportunities
-to make the place they live better
-to get skills and competences for their future life
-to push politicians , local governments and the center director to think and act environmentally
wise.

Threats
-they do not know how long will stay in the hotspot so they might not be involved

The event was organised in collaboration with Stand by me Lesvos ,an NGO working on the hot spot of Karatepe in Lesvos. We had the involvement of representatives of many communities who live in the centre i.e Syrians, Afghanis, Pakistan and people from Africa. We could not have any locals because is not easy to get to the hot spot but there is much interest by environmental groups to collaborate in the permanent forum that will be established.

Next Steps

We have decided to establish a permanent forum of young people leaving in the RIC ,who will have as a priority in their everyday life the protection of the environment. We should mention that is
crucial for young people who live in such difficult situations as asylum seekers in very degraded conditions to take care of their surroundings. There are many groups in the RIC who are involved in sharing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials.

A good example of what they do is the reusing of life jackets and parts of the boats they use to come to Greece to bags and other items.

Their future plans as discussed are:
-Sustainable consumption
-Tackling food waste
-Waste management
-Recycling
-Waste prevention measures
-Waste as a resource
-Empowering repair and re-use

Participants showed great interest to collaborate with all involved actors in the RIC in order to make their lives better, to protect the environment and reuse anything possible.

Although there are a lot of big problems for the people living in hotspots as refugees and asylum seekers, its much appreciated when we see that they have interest to make their lives better in general but protecting the environment also.