Having already sorted the children’s clothes, we all met at the container area to load the 4 vans with the sorted children’s clothing. Yesterday the interpreters had handed out 100tickets in 2 of the 4 areas for new arrivals. For the 2nd day we were distributing to new arrivals along with the Dutch family. 

 

With so many new arrivals daily, getting aid out as often as possible is critical. The head of Iris House, Janne works out a rotating schedule to be as fair and equitable to all of the residents.

Even best planned intentions can have consequences- today we learned that while people were told to start lining up at 10:00am for the 11:00am distribution. People actually started lining up at 7:30am.

We returned to the same area we’d distributed yesterday.  This time we unloaded big tarps, put the bags of clothing in a row by size and put out a pile of clothing per size for people to shop in.

Once again I helped Janne register the families.  Every family is given a case number by the Greek government and has sheets of papers for each family member if they have arrived within the last week, and a 3 fold card for people who had been here a bit longer.  

Toward the end of the distribution a mom came up to the table with her teenage daughter.  12 to be exact.  The young girl was beautiful and could speak a little English.  Her mother asked about shoes for her daughter.  “I’m so sorry, we are out of larger size shoes” I replied to mom.  “The rats, they are eating her shoes” the mom pleaded.  

For children 2 years or younger the families were able to pick out 10 items and get a blanket.  For older children up to 14 years old, only 5 items.

Families left the area with their arms loaded with clothing or in bags or piled high on strollers.  

We were all tired when we dropped off the remaining boxes of clothing at the container area about 6pm.  In all over 300 kids received clothing.