Our jumpers help the Lesvos refugees

The Starfish Foundation is a relatively new charity, created to help the refugees of the Greek island Lesvos, after they received about 60 boats a day of refugees during the Summer/Autumn of 2015. 

With donations from tourists and volunteers around the world, they have created a camp for the refugees to give them shelter, medical support and food. 

Our donation

We wanted to help, so we recently donated six boxes of Wool Overs jumpers along with £3,450 worth of donations from other fundraisers. In addition to our jumpers, these included 402 new pairs of shoes and 114 pairs of warm socks, plus 11 waterproof tents fitted with LED tent lamps.

The arrival of the winter rains and winds saw some refugees sleeping out in the open, so the tents especially will be a very welcome addition to the camp, to help refugees settle and sleep. 

The Lesvos refugees 

Image source:  Brice Garcin via The Starfish Foundation

Each day Lesvos welcomed refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Cuba. The Starfish Foundation met refugees looking for salvage, most of which arrived in overcrowded flimsy boats. Many were accompanied by elderly relatives and young babies and desperate for help. To see the enormous amount of resilience and courage they each held within them throughout their ordeal, was something to be inspired by. 

These remarkable people were in the middle of a war where they saw their homes destroyed by bombs, their relatives lost and the little amount of opportunity in their homeland disappear. Having left most of their possessions behind, fleeing was their only option. 

Volunteers in Lesvos spent their week helping refugees off boats, making sure they arrived safely along with sorting the clothing donations, to give them the best possible chance of staying as warm as possible throughout their stay and their journey. 

Find out more about the refugee crisis in Lesvos and the work that the Starfish Foundation are doing.

We’re pleased we could help and that our jumpers contributed to such a huge cause and helped refugees in need of warmth and salvation.