The PC(USA)’s World Mission Office of the Middle East and Europe, in conjunction with several denomination partners, held its second “People on the Move” webinar Monday. It featured representatives from Lesvos Solidarity (Greece) and Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans, located on the U.S./Mexico border. The webinar focused on the challenges faced by forced migration and global trends in migration policy, including externalization of borders, deterrence mechanisms, and capricious immigration legislation and its implications.
The PC(USA)’s World Mission Office of the Middle East and Europe, in conjunction with several denomination partners, is sponsoring a webinar focused on the challenges faced by forced migration. “People on the Move” is scheduled for Monday, August 5 at noon Eastern Time.
A human rights activist who serves refugees and asylum seekers in Greece will be bringing her message of solidarity and inclusion to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) later this year while serving as an International Peacemaker.
A human rights activist who serves refugees and asylum seekers in Greece will be bringing her message of solidarity and inclusion to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) later this year while serving as an International Peacemaker.
More than 15 years ago, Efi Latsoudi moved from Athens, Greece, to Lesvos Island when she realized “there are refugees suffering and local society didn’t know much about it. No one was taking care of them. I wanted to know what was happening to them.” She founded Lesvos Solidarity, an organization that serves refugees and others and is supported in part by gifts to the Peace & Global Witness Offering, which many Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations received Sunday as part of World Communion Sunday.
Wandering the streets of Athens with two small children in tow, Fatima had nowhere to turn.
Left homeless following a massive fire that closed the Moria Refugee Camp in 2020, the native Afghani was arrested and imprisoned after unknowingly becoming involved with drug dealers.
Devastated and alone in a Greek prison — her two little ones sent off to a shelter for unaccompanied children — Fatima may as well have been invisible, until her case was supported by a refugees legal aid organization, which referred her cause to Lesvos Solidarity.
Anthony was dealt a bad hand in life. Looking intently into the eyes of the Rev. Charles Harrison, pastor of Barnes United Methodist Church in Indianapolis and president of the board of the Indy TenPoint Coalition, the young man visiting from Chicago made his tearful confession.
Presbyterian World Mission’s Office of the Middle East and Europe brought together representatives from global partners in Southern Europe virtually Tuesday to discuss the interconnections of justice, solidarity and mutual ministry.
Just off the coast of Turkey, the Moria Refugee Camp on the Greek island of Lesvos has become an important stop for migrants fleeing Syria, Afghanistan and other places around the world. After a massive fire at the Moria camp last month, the Greek government has notified Pikpa camp it must cease operations by Oct. 15.
“When I left there, I was ashamed — and I consider myself a convinced European — to be a member of this European Union,“ said Martin Dutzmann, the authorized representative of the Protestant Churches in Germany (EKD) at the German government and the EU after returning from his recent visit to the overcrowded and chaotic refugee camp Moria on Lesvos Island. And, he adds, “the EU has kept the situation in the camps on the Greek islands at bay for years.”
