Whilst I was in Lesvos, I met a young Afghan refugee named Sara who had the idea to make bags from leftover donated clothes and fabrics. I brought her idea to the women’s shelter where I was working at the time, and together with Sara, we worked on the project until I had to return home to Switzerland. It was there that the bags caught up with me again.
Soon after I arrived back in Switzerland, Sara contacted me. She asked me to continue the bag project with her as she wanted to share her skills with people and create a source of income for herself. For me, there was no question that I would support her in this pursuit, providing opportunities for Sara which continued to be denied to her by Europe. So, I teamed up with a friend from Berlin and started the project. What awaited us was not easy at all. We spent almost a year finding solutions on how to get fabric in Lesvos, how to employ the young Afghan woman without having her residence permit revoked, how to find someone who would give us a space to produce the bags, how we would ship the bags to Germany and Switzerland.
We spent hours upon hours with endless bureaucratic questions until my Berlin friend decided to leave the project. This was the first stumbling block that got in my way. But this was quickly cleared out of the way, because as coincidence would have it, or not – I met Diana and Markus at an event and was introduced to their organization #EducationEveryone. They were looking for a project to support, and I had just started my project. So, we started the process again, this time with the goal of finding an NGO in Lesvos that would take care of the people and the project directly on the ground and with whom we could enter cooperation.
With Starfish Foundation, we found not only an organization that supports people seeking asylum, but the one that also supports the local Greek population and brings them together with refugees; the organization was called Starfish Foundation. It was exactly what we were looking for. Now we had everything and were more than ready. Unfortunately, the biggest stumbling block so far then followed. Joy and sadness were so close to each other: Sara received the positive news that she could finally leave the island and move to the mainland of Greece. For us, however, this meant that she would be leaving our bag project. Our set-up had to be rethought once again.
It was our good fortune that soon we were able to find two tailors from the Moria refugee camp, who together with Marieke, our project manager with Starfish on the ground, developed the bags from scratch. The sewing workshop grew to include ten tailors who had all fled from Syria, Afghanistan, and various countries in Africa. The result of their hard work is – bagforeveryone – vegan bags, all handmade, all unique, created by refugee and local Greek women and men from Lesvos.
Olivia
