Dr. Sandie Morgan and Dave Stachowiak are joined by a long time partner, Paraskevi Champeridou. Paraskevi, affectionately referred to as Voula, is the director of the Syrian Humanitarian Initiative, BRIDGES. She co-established a holistic restoration and integration approach for Syrian refugees passing into Greece daily. Together, they examine how refugees are vulnerable to further victimization and exploitation.

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Transcript

Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 194, Is the Refugee Crisis Over?

Production Credits: [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave: [00:00:30] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie: [00:00:34] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave: [00:00:38] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, yet another friend today who has been a partner for so long in this work to end human trafficking. We have a guest here in the studio who is a longtime friend of yours.

Sandie: [00:00:57] I am so, excited to have Paraskevi Champeridou from Athens, Greece. She was here speaking at Ensure Justice 2019. If you missed it, please be sure to go online and look at the links to see what you missed and plan to come next year 2020. Paraskevi Champeridou is also, known to me as Voula and I’ve known her for so, many years, I don’t want to say how many years. She’s a mother, a wife of 25 years, she has two daughters 20 and 16, she’s a social worker and a family counselor. She had been working as a private counselor for many years teaching human relationships in Athens, Greece and has been participating, speaking, and organizing many conferences on mental health, family relationships, domestic violence, and human trafficking. But in 2013 she and her husband, Elias, established the NGO humanitarian initiative, BRIDGES, as they foresaw that huge waves of Syrian refugees would pass through Greece, and that happened in 2015. Now they envision their holistic restoration and full integration. She is the legal representative of BRIDGES, working with her husband to give voice to the voiceless and victimized refugees who are daily passing from Greece. Voula welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast.

Voula: [00:02:30] Thank you, it’s a privilege to be here.

Sandie: [00:02:32] We are so, happy to have you! On Friday when you spoke about the refugees at Ensure Justice, you quoted someone as explaining their plight as “all gone”. Can you explain that for us?

Voula: [00:02:47] Yes, it’s a real quotation, it’s from someone who said that to us that when they arrived in Greece they arrived because “all gone”. And by this they meant that actually, they had lost everything, they had lost their lives, they had lost their family, they lost their counsel, they lost their habits, their schooling, their fields. They have actually lost their everyday life, their memories, their feelings, everything. So, saying this, it’s actually they lost their own soul and they were sharing their tears because they had nothing else. And when everything is gone, when all is gone, then by itself this is a motivating power because when what is left, you have to go for the next step because there is nothing else behind. So, by itself, this is a great motivation to leave everything and go for the next step. But also, there is such a big wound and then you can so, easily be victimized because you are looking for hope and whatever it is being offered to you, you are going to take it because all is gone, nothing has been left.

Sandie: [00:04:01] When I visited you two years ago I was shocked as you were talking to a young man who was desperate to at least be reunified with his family, who had made it to another European country. And he was trying to figure out how to get there. The process is difficult, the countries aren’t accepting him, but that’s where his family is. So, he told you he found someone to take him and you said, “Do you trust your smuggler?” I thought who asks that kind of question. But when people are desperate, they become vulnerable to believing lies and becoming victims of smugglers, and even of human trafficking, because somebody offers them hope, offers them a job. What is your definition of a refugee?

Voula: [00:05:00] You see, a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution of war or violence. This is a definition by UNHCR and their standard many times it’s a definition that sounds very bureaucratic and it’s very good for all of us to understand what violence means, what war means, and what persecution means. And it takes time because we sometimes we have never walked in their shoes to understand and I strongly believe that for all of us we can very easily be refugees. We are just a war away for being refugees and just to walk in their shoes. And we do not understand this; we think that they are refugees, but we are not because we are safe, but we are not.

Sandie: [00:05:52] When our students first go, and they visit BRIDGES, the most exceptional thing they discover is that these are families just like we are. They would walk back to our accommodations at night discussing, I met a dentist, I met at school teacher, I met an attorney, I met a judge and their children and now they are sleeping in accommodations that are sometimes condemned hotels. They’re sleeping in tents, they’re sleeping in what was supposed to be temporary circumstance, and now some of them have been there for years already. Can you give us some examples of what political and family persecution, or all of the different examples?

Voula: [00:06:44] Most of these people they are very well educated but unfortunately because of this situation they have to come into Greece and ask for asylum and sometimes because of their culture, the political and the family situation ca...