ZRAP Volunteering

On we are happy to collaborate with our friends from JRS - Isusovačka služba za izbjeglice on their magazine "Paths" telling the story of eleven footballers from the World Cup who suffered the consequences of war and displacement.

Today our friends from JRS Croatia (JRS - Isusovačka služba za izbjeglice) are launching their crowdfunding campaign to support the project "SOL - Center for Integration of Refugees". JRS is an internationally recognised non-profit organisation that helped us a lot during the refugee crisis and that is fully committed to defend the rights of refugees and gives full support to those migrants which are in the process of integration and asylum seeking in Croatia. With your help, you'll be supporting these migrants in labours such as finding a job and adapting to the local community.

Please donate, you'll be helping these guys keeping the hard work rolling!

Jučer stranci, danas susjedi - Strangers Neighbors Podržite Centar za integraciju izbjeglica “Sol” // Support Center for integration of refugees “Sol” | Check out 'Jučer stranci, danas susjedi - Strangers Neighbors' on Indiegogo.

How cool is that JRS SouthEast Europe team is considering the testimony of our volunteers for the organization's information brochure!! :)

Happy World Humanitarian Day to all the people and organizations that attend and defend the safety and prosperity of the humans that are in need. Keep carrying on your projects and restlessness!

Today is World Humanitarian Day. The number of people in need has more than doubled since 2004, making it necessary to find new ways to tackle humanitarian crises. Read more about how Parliament is helping http://epfacebook.eu/p8H5

Closing letter:

It was a really special day in Porin today,
we closed the project after almost 10 months of volunteering around Croatia.

We delivered the last donations from ZŠEM international students and we said goodbye to the great team of JRS SouthEast Europe, their staff accompanied us during these months and provided us with their best and friendly care.
We wish them good luck with their future challenges and we encourage them to keep the hard work going!

Also we had a special farewell with one of the asylum seekers. Shahkla, that is from the Kurdish region of Iraq, a place that she left because of the "terrible smell of blood, corpses and gunpowder", as she manifested us.

Despite her tragedy behind, she's definitely the most energized refugee in Porin. She is very known among the asylums seekers because of her dancing lessons or her makeup sessions with kids and women.

As a way to say goodbye, she gave me one picture of her to take back to Spain.

Fernando

This is Ahmed Ali, a Medicine student from Egypt that joined the project ZRAP Volunteering in associacion with JRS SouthEast Europe. This are his thoughts about this experience:

"I started volunteering for 2 years with refugees, beginning with Italian Red Cross and joining this project. I haven’t finished my medical school and nowadays I am doing my Erasmus studies in Croatia. Volunteering spirit inspired my life or you could say changed it and for others either.

You made a change on a vulnerable life, drawing a smile on children face who need someone to stand with. Nothing could better than invest in our humanity future. As young world nowadays needs us without these human-made fake borders. If we don’t have our role in the future leading in the best path, we will all lose! Even our humanity!"

Today in Porin we spent some time with our friend Khalif from Somalia. He displayed us his encourage to find a job in and to build a future life in Europe, that's why he came for some advice to make a good Curriculum Vitae and to keep looking for opportunities!!

War begun in 1991, when he was six years old in Obracovac, Croatia. He and his mother fled as refugees to Zadar after his grandfather was killed by Serbian officials and his father joined the conflict as a soldier of the Croatian Army.

There in Zadar at the Hotel Kolovare, reconverted in a refugee center by that time, he spent months playing with his ball. "He was kicking the ball all day long and he probably broke more windows than the soundwaves from the bombings," says one of the receptionists.

The chief of the youth football school of Zadar visited one day the hotel and met the family. "They were very poor. They had no money for shirts or shin guards. So I made a wooden ones because I knew that boy had potential and I took him to the football academy in Zadar, which at that time there were mornings where you could find grenades or caps of bullets on the field. Football was not the priority".

After Zadar, he signed with 16 years old for Dinamo Zagreb. But first, he had to leave for one year of military service in Bosnia. He played that season in Zrinjski FC and he was named the best player in the Bosnian tournament with only 18 years old.

His subsequent life is much more known. British Tottenham Hotspurs signed him after some successful seasons with Dinamo Zagreb and then joined Real Madrid where he was crowned as European Champion.

His name is Luka Modrić.

The situation after European Union-Ankara agreement and the subsequent dissolution of the refugee camp in Slavonski Brod focuses in Hotel Porin, in Dugave (outsiders of Zagreb).

This hotel, reconverted in an asylum seekers centre is also the detention unit from the government of the republic of Croatia and the operations quarters of non governmental organizations to provide support to the needs of the refugees.

VOLUNTEER ANNOUNCEMENT:

As long as the activity in the border and the number of refugees arriving to Croatia has decreased, our colleagues from JRS are reallocating the volunteering work in the following venues:

* Visits to the Reception Centre for asylum seekers in Kutina

- Every Tuesday 09:00 - 13:00 (departure from Zagreb at 08:00 and return at 14:00)
-Every Thursday from 09:00 - 15:00 (departure from Zagreb at 08:00 and return at 16:00)

* Reception Centre for asylum seekers of Porin (Dugave)

- Every day from 08:30 to 16:00
- Weekends (by appointment)

Please send us a PM in case you are interested!

Thanks for your willingness to collaborate and help,
ZRAP

On let's ensure that refugee women's rights are properly respected.

A woman looks through a train window as asylum seekers wait for their train to depart to Slovenia on their journey to western Europe at a refugee transit camp in Slavonski Brod, Croatia, on February 10.

The photo, taken by Darrin Zammit Lupi Photography as part of our Journeys of Hope story-telling project, was this week awarded first prize in the photo competition on 'Women Refugees and Asylum Seekers' organised by the European Parliament Information Office in Malta.