THE T H AT C H E R DEVELOPMENT AWA R D S Volunteers, Movement on the Ground staff and residents play a Volleyball game organised by Development Award recipient Benjamin Freeborn on the newly-restored Vial refugee camp football pitch
The Thatcher Development Awards offer grants of up to £2000 to enable Somerville students to pursue an innovative project with wider social benefits and that facilitates personal growth. The funding that the Awards provides can allow students such as Benjamin Freeborn (2020, BA Law) to make an impact on the ground where it matters most. Ben used his award of £1558 to travel to Greece to volunteer in the Vial refugee camp on the island of Chios with Movement on the Ground (MOTG). MOTG is an organisation that believes that refugee camps should be run by engaging the resident community and empowering and assisting them to make a difference to their quality of life. They rely heavily on community volunteers in all activities, from maintenance and construction to cleaning and sports coaching. Ben was expecting to work in a maintenance and construction-based role, but circumstances meant that on his first day he was thrust into the more complex task of managing the community volunteer teams. “In Chios, I was working with a community of people from Syria, the Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and more. I quickly found that getting such a diverse group of people to work together wasn’t an easy task,” said Ben. “It was important above all to listen, even when I disagreed with what I was hearing. Rather than trying to keep everyone happy, it was better that everyone felt respected. I quickly learned that there was a good deal of value in just asking ‘how are you’ (‘kef halek’ in Arabic, ‘chetor asti’ in Farsi) each day.
A D.I.Y. foosball table was a popular addition to the camp’s communal living area
“There wasn’t always going to be a perfect solution, but the best way to deal with things was patiently and by example. If I wanted a group to clean up the sludge below the toilet containers… I had to be the first one to start scooping!”
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