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The United Tastes of America presents People Power: How volunteers from around the world came together to help refugees in Greece. A story of human solidarity with resilient and resourceful people.

Bnai Keshet Synagogue
Montclair, NJ

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The United Tastes of America is proud to bring Paul Hutchings, co-founder of Refugee Support, to an evening of education, conversation and, of course, Syria Supper Club snacks.

In March 2016, over 50,000 refugees were trapped in Greece. Europe had shut its borders. They had been travelling for weeks looking for somewhere to rebuild their lives. Most were living in the open and had exhausted all their resources. The winter had been harsh. Almost half were children.

The state institutions were failing people who had lost almost everything so two businessmen, who had been volunteering to help migrants in Calais, went to Greece just to try and do something. And so Refugee Support Europe was born. Working with the Greek community, they established a free shop on a derelict military site where 800 Syrian refugees were living in tents. Through the shop they organised the dignified distribution of essential food and hygiene products.

With the support of almost 600 volunteers from 40 nations and many thousands of individual donors, what started out as a single shop operation became something much bigger. At that first camp in Alexandreia they founded a clothes boutique, community kitchen, language school, playground and cafeteria.

Soon after starting, they began supporting two other camps with weekly fresh food parcels, then after 6 months they set up food and clothes shops at Filippiada camp for 400 Syrian and Afghan refugees. After a year they started to support two isolated camps at LM Village and Doliana and in December 2017 they were the first support organisation to help the 400 new arrivals at Katsikas camp. In addition to that, they also had a team based in Bangladesh for 4 months supporting a community of 6,300 Rohingya refugees with food and clothing.

April 3rd, 2018 marks two years of an incredible journey. John Sloan and Paul Hutchings founded and managed Refugee Support but all these achievements are because of the people from all over the world who have helped. It is a story of human solidarity with resilient and resourceful people.

On their first speaker tour of the US, Paul Hutchings is coming to Bnai Keshet to share this story about what is possible and what the latest situation is facing refugees in Europe right now.