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A Heart for Refugees in Ghent

“Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent [A heart for refugees in Ghent]” is an initiative that provides customized aid to asylum seekers. The organization was started and spreaded around through Facebook.

berfin karakecili Anastasia Goana Monika Nemcová Sukran Ceren Salali Addes Tesfamariam Jolanda van Grunsven

Published date

12/09/2016 - 04:00

Courses

Online writing and publishing

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Read time

5 minutes

Resistance and aid

Following the “refugee crisis” of Europe, a large majority of European citizens were divided with respect to attitudes towards asylum seekers and refugees. There were some who were vehemently against their country’s acceptance of asylum seekers to an extent whereby violent protests took place. For instance, “14 pig heads [were left] at the entrance of a refugee centre in Eschmarkerveld, near the city of Enschede” in an attempt to unnerve Muslim asylum seekers (RT Network, 2015). Additionally, “Violent scuffles broke out across Europe” in February 2016 by “far right group PEGIDA [Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West]” (Charlton & Joseph, 2016; Gemeente Amsterdam, 2016). This were but two of the most striking incidents that has happened in order to showcase citizens’ enragement regarding the new migrants in various cities.

Despite these, initiatives to aid asylum seekers have also emerged (Cox, n.d.; Goroya, Dhala & Hayes, 2015; Mensch Mensch Mensch e.V., n.d). They run on the belief that all human beings are equal and deserve the right to feel safe (ibid). Evelyne Huughe, from Belgium, is one of them. She started an organization which aims to aid people who are in need including asylum seekers and refugees.

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A heart for refugees

This organization is titled “Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent [A heart for refugees in Ghent]” (Een Hart Voor Vluchtelingen). She explained that her motivation behind this initiative stemmed from some photographs that she had seen from Brussels. In these pictures, she had seen how people were living in tents with inhumane conditions. She said, “I wanted to do something for those people. We are all humans regardless of our skin colour and religion.” And with the question, “Can't we do something?” in her mind, she embarked upon this project.

Initially, friends and family members of Evelyne’s had offered as much help as possible to the asylum seekers however, she soon realized that this was not enough. In an attempt to garner more support and means, she set up a Facebook group entitled, “Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent” in September 2015 (Een Hart Voor Vluchtelingen, n.d., Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent, 2015). And, within 4 days, the group had amassed 200 members and is still increasing. She considered the raising of awareness to be a success. Albeit the presence of initial negative reactions, which stem from the perspective that asylum seekers and refugees are “illegal” and undeserving of help, Evelyne and her team their ideology clear through the words: “Nobody is illegal, we are all humans”.

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Between the community and the state -institutions

She then proceeded on organize meetings with others who, like her, were, and still are, working for the initiative. They established that the first thing this organization had to do was to find a common goal and, for them, this was to meet the needs of people. At present, the organization consists of volunteers from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. Evelyne had shared with us that she feels lucky as the wider community were willing to support by bringing things such as diapers and clothings for the asylum seekers.

In her role, Evelyne is in charge of communicating with the refugee centers in order to find out what the needs of the asylum seekers are. She one-mail. After which, she makes announcements on the Facebook page, as well as, organize the drop-off locations for people to leave donated items. This is a useful working approach as the organization is able to gather items that are actually needed by the asylum seekers themselves.

In order to eradicate the possibility of chaos with the amount of donated items, “Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent” prepares personal packages for the asylum seekers and refugees. This is of importance in order to ensure that people would be able find the appropriate size of clothings that they need. Eveline shared that by doing the aforementioned, they feel that this very action in itself serves as a sign of respect to the asylum seekers and the refugees. It is as if the organization is saying- your thoughts and needs are important too. As such, it is, in some sense, a means of psychological help for the asylum seekers and refugees.

As previously mentioned, “Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent” serves as a clear example of people who are willing to help, based on the belief in equality within humanity. It can be said that due to organizations such as “Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent”, the wider Belgian community is more actively engaged in understanding the situation of asylum seekers and refugees. Thus, taking one step further in eradicating negative perspectives. Through this, we contend that it is indeed a successful attempt in providing personal aid to people in need. And much of this success can be owed to the organization of Eveline and her team as well as, the accessibility of their social media page. This initiative is a perfect example how online activism can create real influences on real life.

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Notes

[1] The organization is named “Een hart voor vluchtelingen Gent”, which translated to English means, “A heart of refugees in Ghent”. In this project, however, we feel that it is essential to draw distinctions between refugees and asylum seekers and not categorize them into the same grouping. As such, we will be referring to both terminologies, vluchtelingen [refugees] as well as asielzoeker [asylum seekers].

[2] In her own words

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