A morning with Bienvenidxs Refugiadxs Alcalá de Henares, a morning with this organization whose aim is to channel outgoing and local initiatives that offer assistance to the refugees and people in need. The interview with Soraya is the new topic of our “Social Awareness” column.
First, we must thank all the tenants of helpMadrid. Thanks to their donations, we have been able to help this organization. This is our way to say aloud with them “Together, we can!” As we have mentioned several times, one of our new missions is raising social awareness among our young tenants.
We would like to thank Soraya, too. We would like to thank her because she has given us the chance to help people in need, to make the difference for someone. Of course, we want to thank her for answering our questions. Even though it is easy to collect info about Bienvenidxs Refugiadxs Alcalá de Henares on their web, we strongly believe that, to convey a message, a direct contact is better than dozens of blog posts. Therefore, let’s cut the chatter and let’s begin with the interview.
Hi Soraya, it is a pleasure to host you in our blog. Please, could you tell us something about this organisation and its values?
We are a no profit organisation composed by volunteers whose aim is the enforcement of the Human Rights.
For us “Refugee” is that person who is looking for a refuge, with no exceptions, without quotas and without excuses.
Moreover, fostering does not mean bring people in Spain so that they can stop suffering in Greece or in their countries and make them suffer here. Fostering means live together; it means take care of each other among equals because what happened to them can happen to you, too.
How have you structured your actions to help refugees?
We structure our actions into two categories:
- ACTION: we plan donations campaigns of items for all those people who are looking for a refuge in Spain. Furthermore, we organize fundraising activities to send money to the “CONCENTRATION” camps (I refuse to call them “REFUGES”).
- SENSIBILIZATION: we give lectures; we organize workshops and games to work for the Refuge for the Human rights with many kind of public. Moreover, we plans remonstrance to demand the compliance of the International rights.
We have read about local initiatives on your web. Can you please tell us something more about them? Can anyone do it?
We strongly believe that now, with all these right-wings hate campaigns, awareness-raising campaigns are of paramount importance. Therefore, we encourage synergies with other local or national organisations that mutually raise awareness in favour of our causes. All the things we do in our organisation are opened to all the citizens. Actually, this is our goal: get to the hearts of the greatest possible number of people.
Which message would you like to convey? What would you like to say to people?
On one hand, I would like that the critical thinking prevails against baseless hatred campaigns. I would like that nobody is taken in by islamophobic, xenophobic and chauvinist people who can benefit only those who attempt to face us.
On the other hand, I would like to emphasize that we all live in the same world that suffers globally the consequences of our actions. It is pointless not to protect people in order to protect the borders, especially if the natural disasters that we are causing (likewise they drive mass migrations) do not understand the lines on a map.
We must change our interests and put LIFE at the heart of all our efforts.
How can we help and support Bienvenidxs Refugiadxs Alcalá de Henares? What can our tenants do?
One of our main functions is furnishing the flat of those people who leave the refugee centres and who begin their new lives with little assistance. They can afford only empty flats in bad conditions. Therefore and due to a lack of groups that may help them in this respect, BRAH helps furnishing these flats and providing household items, cleaning supplies and personal hygiene products. Collecting campaigns are always available to collect these and other items that we need occasionally (school supplies, winter clothes, baby items…)
On the other hand, we organize many awareness raising activities and fundraising to support economically at borders (Sahara, Calais, Greece, Serbia, Yemen,...). Therefore, the best possible way you can support us is being part of these events and broadcast them to ensure their success. If you would like to volunteer, you can contact us and we will be more than happy to assign you some tasks.
Discovering this organisation and its work has been an interesting experience. We really hope you have enjoyed this chat with Soraya and that you will keep following their work. Another thing we would like you to understand is that caring should not be a duty, but a pleasure. We are a little brick to create a better society and organisations like Bienvenidxs Refugiadxs offer us the chance to do it.
If you are following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, you may have certainly noticed it. Thanks to the contribution of our tenants, we have been able to support Imagina Más in January and now Bienvenidxs Refugiadxs. Useless to say, we hope to help many other organisations and we are sure that “Together, we can!” We can ameliorate the life of many people in need; we can promote equality and support diversity.
With all these resolutions, a new interesting year is waiting for helpMadrid. For the time being, we wish to say goodbye to all our readers and we must send to all our tenants a huge
THANK YOU!