Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM) SIĞINMACILAR VE GÖÇMENLERLE DAYANIŞMA DERNEĞİ was established in Ankara on December 22, 1995 as a non-profit and non-governmental organization.
Note: This page is frequently updated. It is by no means complete.
"The Mental Health Crisis Of Refugees And The Volunteers Serving Them," Shoshanna Howard, June 23, 2016, Huffington Post.
- Shoshanna, who is based in Oakland, volunteered in the Port of Piraeus, Greece.
"Refugee Stories from Greece- Macedonia Border: A Denial of Humanity," Laila Soudi, June 23, 2016, Huffington Post.
- Laila recently graduated from UC San Francisco with a MSc in Global Health Sciences, where she examined the prevalence of depression and PTSD among displaced populations in the Middle East. As a native Syrian whose family lives in Jordan, Laila returns to the Middle East frequently and works extensively with refugee populations. Though at Stanford, she is a member of BRR.
Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM) SIĞINMACILAR VE GÖÇMENLERLE DAYANIŞMA DERNEĞİ was established in Ankara on December 22, 1995 as a non-profit and non-governmental organization.
The primary goal of ASAM is to create solutions to the problems that refugees and asylum seekers encounter in Turkey, to help them to fulfill their primary needs and to support them to provide access for fundamental rights and services. Since its establishment, ASAM has been providing psycho-social support for asylum seekers and refugees coming from conflict zones. ASAM aims to attract the relevant authorities' attention to the problems of performs of refugees and ayslum seekers by carrying our awareness raising activities.
Today, ASAM carries out its works with its expert staff consisting of the personnel for case workers, psychologists, social workers, health educators and translators in 37 provinces with 39 offices. The activities coordinated by Central Office in Ankara are being carried out by covering the following provinces: Adana, Afyon, Amasya, Aydın, Balıkesir, Bursa, Çanakkale, Denizli, Edirne, Erzurum, Gaziantep, Hatay, Isparta, İstanbul, İzmir, Kahramanmaraş, Kayseri, Kırklareli, Kırşehir, Kilis, Konya, Malatya, Mardin, Mersin, Muğla, Nevşehir, Niğde, Sakarya, Samsun, Şanlıurfa, offices in Tokat and Van, Çorum, Kastamonu, Burdur, Karaman and Sivas.
ASAM provides services to refugees and asylum seekers without discrimination on the grounds of language, religion, sex, race, sexual orientation and political ideology. Besides ASAM contributes to the academic studies by analysing national and international crises for the purpose of forecasting national and international migration movements.
Draw My Life
How can the humanitarian community strengthen and understand the voice of child refugees? Draw My Life is inspired by how childrens’ art therapy in the field can become a basis for better data around the needs and experience of refugee children.
Draw My Life provides a set of tools for field workers, the humanitarian community, and the public to understand, visualise and share the experience of refugee children. We are developing a web-based tool for field workers to easily and safely share child artwork and important, anonymised contextual data. This fall, Draw My Life will be partnering with child protection organisations like Terre Des Hommes and the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) to create the first data set of its kind to be contributed to the world’s largest repository for open humanitarian data as a call to action for both humanitarian organisations in the field to work together with the technology and data community to connect, visualise and amplify what we can learn from children and how to support their wellbeing and rights across the journey of migration.
This project is in partnership with: Terre Des Hommes, Novi Sad Humanitarian Centre (NSHC), Destination Unknown, Humanitarian Data Exchange (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and Women Hack for Non-Profits.
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Website -- link to EmpowerHack, the incubator for this effort
e/motion
We are making an app that will enable refugee women to talk to each other about issues they are having. The name of the app comes from the emotion-based chat that will be implemented.
This will involve using the woman's current mood, to pair with other refugees she wants to chat with.
Note. From EmpowerHack, in development.
Introductory video
Presentation - a Google doc
Github
Europa is an illustrated introduction to Europe for migrants and refugees written in four languages — French, English, Farsi and Arabic and available at no charge to NGOs, refugees and migrants. The book brings together facts about Europe’s history, especially its migratory past, with current information about how European countries welcome refugees and migrants.
Article about Europa
Free downloadable ebook
The Flourish Foundation aims to introduce the arts to children as a new creative outlet to bring positivity and motivation to their life situations. Through the arts we aim to help the children to find their new inner confidence, self esteem and a new positive way of thinking which provides them with a new set of coping strategies during challenging periods in their lives. Ultimately ensure that children are offered a path to help them flourish and see a positive future.
Note: Flourish works in many locations. In fall 2016, they started working in the refugee camp in Ritsona, Greece.
Football for Refugees
We are a group of individual volunteers from all over the world. We organise football activities for the refugee children and youth living in the Kará Tepé Refugee Camp in Lesvos, Greece. The core aim of the organisation is to promote their physical and mental well-being and -most importantly- allow them to have fun!
In partnership with the Municipality of Lesvos, the NGO Movement on the Ground, and the cooperation of FC Barcelona Foundation among others, we are implementing a Football3 Project, with the aim of promoting social cohesion within the refugee youth from different nationalities, and their social integration within the wider local Greek population.
The main activities of the project are (a) weekly training sessions at Spanos Mini Football Academy in Panagiouda, and (b) the organisation of a Football Festival every quarter, with the participation of local academy teams such as Olympiacos FC, Kalloni FC (Panathhinaikos) and Eliakos FC.
Hi App
Having a network and being in control of your primary needs in your life are essential elements to be able to enter the job market. That is why the Hi app allows people to offer or get help on work, housing, education, family, spare time and many more. The Hi app is a free digital tool where everybody can share his or her experience and help each other.
The Hi app is a platform where everybody can share his or her experience and help each other. Everybody can help on at least one domain. The eight domains are: language, housing, welfare, spare time, children, work, education, and mobility.
Note. VDAB (the Flemish emploment Service in Belgium) is launching this new app for all official asylum seekers, refugees and subsidiary protected people. It's a bèta (test) product that will be launching in the Provinces of East Flanders and Antwerp (and after evaluation to the rest of Flanders). November 2016
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Humanity Crew
"The body heals but the soul remains broken. Piecing the parts together starts with us."
We are a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health professionals from the Galilee who traveled to Lesbos in November 2015 in response to the Syrian crisis.
Following our trip we established an organization dedicated to the psychosocial support of refugees.
Coming from similar social and cultural backgrounds as the refugees, and communicating in the same language, Arabic, we were in a unique position to provide in-depth and sustained support.
Our professionals come with substantial experience and background in treating victims of trauma and conflict.
The Hutto Project aims to assemble a children's choir within an emergency refugee camp in Berlin. Together, we will compose an original choral work, which will have the chance to be premiered in a public concert in Berlin this Spring.
This project is motivated by a belief in the transformative, healing, and regenerative power of arts education, and its profound and lasting impact on young people.
Integreat
Can we provide all the relevant information to incoming people in our city in their own language as quickly as possible – without permanent internet access and without confusing paper chaos? We asked ourselves this question, and along with the answer came Integreat, an application to provide all relevant information for incoming asylum seekers, communal and multilingual. Having started under the project title Refguide+, Integreat is now not only a signpost for the first 14 days after arrival but a holistic service ecosystem for cities, counties and initiatives for the integration of refugees or people with migration background.
Why a smartphone application? Approximately 75% of all refugees have a smartphone, while almost none of them has a mobile data plan to access information from e.g. websites from outside of public hotspots. Especially during the first days, the app supports with addresses, tipps and advice regarding the usual procedures and next steps. But even during the following integration, possible over several years, there is up to date and dynamic information on local events and changes in the asylum system on site. Especially the local differences are a focus point of our solution.
Expense for the municipality/city? From our experience we know that no city is like the other. Nevertheless, we offer a basic structure within the app and the CMS that lays a foundation for the urban information. Only the locally-specific information have to be collected, and translated where necessary. It is also possible to organize a workshop, in order to incorporate all information in a short period of time.
Which platforms are we using? The maintenance of the contents is handled via the world’s most used content management system WordPress. It is intuitively usable and without extensive training. With this project website we adress cities and local authorities that want to use Integreat. In doing so, we provide our entire technology free of charge and offer assistance during the installation.
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Android app
Play Therapy for Children
Many refugee children from Syria have experienced what no child should ever witness or be a part of. Some people say the children’s childhood has been stolen by war and the current crisis. Traumatic memories are haunting many of these children. Without a safe place where these thoughts, fears and memories can be expressed the children continue to suffer in silence. Words cannot be found at times to express what is going on inside them and instead the child finds him or herself suffering from nightmares, anxiety attacks, somatic symptoms such as head or stomach aches and/or behaviour problems.
Play therapy provides a place for children to express and explore their thoughts, fears and emotions in safe child friendly way. Instead of relying on words alone (which children can find very difficult), play therapy uses play and creative expression as a form of communication. This is a child’s language where words are no longer a restriction. During the sessions the child has the control and freedom to express themselves in whichever way they choose. There is no right or wrong. The child is fully accepted for who they are by the play therapist.
Note: This work is being done in Jordan.
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Refugee Buddy Network
Volunteer and paid refugee run group, connecting refugees with people around the world who can offer friendship, direct aid and support.
We connect our online volunteers with refugees who are on the move, in refugee camps, living in exile in Turkey or the Levant, or aiming towards - or resettled in - the EU. We do not assist refugees with illegal border crossings or any other unlawful activities.
Want to help? You can make a difference in a refugee's life from your laptop or mobile phone!
Facebook - community
Facebook - group
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Refugee Hero is a – mobile friendly – website with similar functionality to Airbnb. Heroes post a listing to accommodate a refugee. Listings can come from private heroes or from organizations opening up their facilities; such as churches, mosques, schools and universities. Refugees can directly access their data to make an appointment or the volunteers and government officials responsible can use Refugee Hero as an intermediary.
Providing the refugees with a place to stay is not the long term goal of Refugee Hero. “We want the heroes to help the refugees find their way in a new, strange country,” says Ayoub Aouragh. This means Refugee Hero will grow to become a platform facilitating all important aspects linked to migration. This varies from helping refugees find a new school for their children or even arranging social security and applying for a passport.
Refugees Welcome (Flüchtlinge Willkommen) is a digital platform that brings flatshares and refugees together. We provide assistance on questions of co-habitation and financial solutions for private rooms for refugees. Flüchtlinge Willkommen criticises state-driven housing policies that force refugees into camps where they are subject to marginialisation and invisibilisation. Flüchtlinge Willkommen supports decentralised housing solutions for refugees. Through our work, we aspire to contribute to nurturing an open society based on principles of solidarity and equality of all.
One of our core principles as an organisation is that no one is illegal.
Singa France promotes the emergence of spaces and meeting tools, exchange and cooperation between refugees and their host society to promote living together, cultural enrichment and job creation.
Soul Medicine is a mental well-being programme designed to reduce loneliness and depression by sending crowdsourced feel-good knowledge courses and quotes.
Soul Medicine is a crowdsourced SMS microeducation platform designed to overcome barriers to traditional learning environments. We crowdsource community-led content for short, engaging microcourses over SMS in multiple languages. Our goal is to create a self-sustaining vibrant community around “conversational education” with the tools that enable personal learning and build connections for psychosocial support and inclusion. We are currently open to both learners and volunteer educators interested in helping us test and improve Soul Medicine, with a closed pilot in human biology, launching October 2016.
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Website -- link to EmpowerHack, the incubator for this effort
Trampoline House is an independent community center in Copenhagen that provides refugees and asylum seekers in Denmark with a place of support, community, and purpose. offers internships and job training, classes and activities, legal and medical counseling to refugees and asylum seekers, with the aim of breaking the social isolation and sense of powerlessness that many refugees and asylum seekers experience in the Danish asylum system. Trampoline House brings together asylum seekers and Danish citizens, refugees and other residents of Denmark, united by a desire to improve the conditions for asylum seekers and refugees. Join us – it’s also your house!
Uber den Tellerrand Kochen
Cooking over the plate creates a common future of refugees and residents and makes integration into a sustainable process in which all social groups participate in their own interest.
Inspired as a model project, motivated To cross-border encounters and exchanges between cultures.In doing so, the emergence of an open and tolerant society is actively promoted.
With cooking, as one of the most accepted media of cultural exchange, we are able to illuminate the issue of asylum from a new, positive perspective and to reduce barriers. Through the cookbook andcooking classes of cooking outside the box GmbH individuals are presented asylum and refuge behind the terms and allow a Meet at eye level.
As social business supports the cooking outside the box GmbH with the proceeds from cookbook and cooking courses across Germany about the bigger picture - Community *. In creative, creative and sporting projects, people from different cultures meet regularly and get to know each other unfamiliarly.
Note. Based in Berlin, Germany.
Venligboerne
Are you new in Denmark? Do you need help with something or can you provide help to others? Venligboerne (Danish for "Friendly Citizen") is the best place to start! Let us know why you would like to connect and we will try to hook you up with the right people.
Venligboerne is a Danish grassroots movement, aimed at bringing together locals, migrants and refugees.
Facebook - Venligbo News in Danish
Website
Wefugee - community without borders is a Q & A community and a meeting point for refugees, volunteers and organizations.
On Wefugee.org they can give support to each other and share information not only concerning legal matters and asylum proceedings, but also taking into account aspects of daily life such as culture, sports activities or good Halal food.
"I would love to help but I don’t have enough time to do so." This answer is simply not acceptable. No matter if you are at home, sitting on the couch, on the train or having your lunch break; on Wefugee anyone can answer questions and give support to others at any time.
Understanding and tolerance must be built up through both sides. This is what we want to achieve with Wefugee. Our main aim is to promote integration through communication between refugees and locals in order to bring them closer.
Together we can improve the situation of thousands of refugees so that they can easily continue with their lives here. We need your knowledge, which you can share on our platform!
Note. This website is in German, but can be translated by Bing or other machine translators.
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WelcomeRide is a platform that strengthens integration by connecting refugees to people living in Germany.
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X²AI has partnered with FIT to deliver mental health services and emotional well-being to those displaced by the ongoing Syrian crisis. Tess will be deployed as a pilot, giving refugees a communication channel to express themselves, and helping them find ways to better cope and deal with their suffering. The joint effort will be in collaboration with a Yale professor and students from the Yale Refugee Health Initiative.
Note. FIT, Field Innovation Team volunteers from across the globe deploy to disasters and work on disaster risk reduction and resiliency efforts.
Last updated September 18, 2017
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