With great calm and dignity, Meerfez describes an epic journey but frustration at being held in Greece while his brother, who is just 17, is struggling in Germany on his own.

Living conditions in Filippiada are quite good, and much better than on the islands, but he wants his whole family to be together. And yet he waits...

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They talk about what motivated them to come and to come back (5 times in Sue's case!), what they like about the job and what is tough. 

Volunteering with the right attitude is extremely rewarding. It's about putting others first, staying cheerful and showing empathy not just for what refugees have to endure but for our fellow volunteers. 

Please listen to these 2 fine humans and celebrate our unity in diversity.

We think it is the best volunteer-run project in Greece. It is a fantastic case study in learning, trying new things and creating something truly special. At the heart of it is a desire to create something genuinely empowering.

“Everything we do is about empowerment. We don’t want people to depend on us, we don’t want them to be passive. We want them to be active, we want them to create solutions for their daily life challenges themselves.“

A conversation with someone inspirational and lessons for anyone from volunteer on the ground to the manager of a large organisation.

Dina says that host countries expect refugees to be thankful to them for providing a safe place to live. And that refugees are under pressure to express it. But don't they really have a right to be given refuge and importantly, be given the option to develop the way they want to without feeling like they need to pay something back? Not surprisingly, this was controversial.

She also talks movingly about what life was like as a child refugee and the impact that time has had. We talk about the need for dignity and why the way that people receive support is more important that what they receive.

Dina has published two novels A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea and Refuge.

MSF have a long history working in the most difficult circumstance and having to make difficult choices. Vickie talks about how these principles and medical ethics help with many of the difficult decisions she and the organisation need to make with limited resources and enormous needs.

Do they focus on preventive health, non-communicable needs, acute malnutirition, trauma? And what is their campaigning role, calling out the causes of these crises? How do they restore dignity and what does that mean?

Like us, MSF is also in Bangladesh and we talk about the dilemmas there: 

“At the moment, we’re focussed on ensuring that people have what they need to survive. Over time, you can look at bringing in some of those activities that start to bring a bit of normal activity into people’s lives...but how can you normalise a situation where you’ve got a million people living together in really unsuitable circumstances? Do we want to normalise that? And those people don’t want to be refugees forever.”

We talk candidly about how you go about helping in a sudden acute crisis with over a million refugees, the challenges, the other organisations out there and what our role can be.

It is of course impossible to help everybody but we have found a camp of 6000 people and as this podcast goes out we will be doing our first distribution of fruit and vegetables, specifically focussing on the under 5s.

You can help by donating here

“Our request is not impossible. We want medical care and education. We want peace, security and stability. Like other people. And we want to go back to Syria and to live in peace.”

Daniel is pivotal to our work supporting the Rohingya in Bangladesh so talks about why aid with dignity and co-operation is so important.

We also learn about the importance of holding your head high!