Welcomed to EuropeEmily Anne Epstein
Every day this year, thousands of refugees have made the dangerous journey from their war-torn homelands to Europe. Many arrive without food or money; many are children. And as politicians debate whether or not these migrants can find refuge from persecution, volunteers are working to provide them with basic care. Al Jazeera reports that many of these volunteers are Europeans on vacation, and they fill in the gaps while larger organizations, like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, mount a more formal response. “It gets to a certain point where you can’t just watch and wait anymore,” Polly Rola, an Austrian who travelled to a remote village of Croatia to help, said to the news service. “We had some time and some money, so here we are.”
1. A Dutch volunteer tries to comfort a migrant moments after arriving aboard a raft at a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos on October 23, 2015
2. Volunteers and local residents help refugees and migrants disembark from a small vessel after their arrival in Skala Sykaminias on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos on Friday, October 30, 2015.
3.A migrant woman is helped by volunteers after arriving by an overcrowded dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos, after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos on October 10, 2015
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