Deconstructing fear of foreigners: the Emmaus campaign for humane provision for migrants

The idea behind the posters is to open people’s minds to a discussion about the issue, and they should be displayed in our public areas so as to deconstruct people’s fears about receiving migrants. The posters are therefore available in the languages of the European countries in which Emmaus groups are located.

You can use the posters as a gateway to more in-depth discussions with your customers and other contacts, or to invite politicians to discuss Emmaus’ approach to migration and reception policies. This invitation could be supplemented by including Emmaus International’s publication “First global report on our fight against poverty”.

At the European level, this campaign is in keeping with the discussions started between the Member States on the European Council and with the European Parliament on the new Migration and Asylum Pact. This pact sets the policy directions for these issues for the coming years.

Our team is available if you want to undertake advocacy work or arrange a meeting with your customers and/or elected representatives: eve.poulteau@emmaus-europe.org

We still have a number of posters in stock, so let us know if you want them sent out by post:
contact@emmaus-europe.org

The posters are also available to download in different formats for each language:
a web format, a standard print format suitable for an office printer, and a professional printer’s format.

Download the posters

General information

Emmaus Oselya’s daily life has been turned upside down

The group has been supporting people fleeing the fighting right from the start of the conflict. Emmaus Oselya has provided support, handed out food, offered accommodation, counselling, and so on. Natalia, leader of Emmaus Oselya in Ukraine, tells us about the community’s daily life, which has been turned upside down since the beginning of the conflict.

How is your community involved in supporting displaced people?

In April, around 50 people came every day to our social support centre in Lviv to take a shower, get their hair cut, do their washing and change their clothes, get something to eat, receive medical care, or simply relax and chat. This makes for a total of over 600 meals handed out, around 100 loads of washing, over 500 items of clothing donated, and close to 200 showers. All of these services are delivered by the community’s companions, who know all about the difficulties of life on the streets. This creates a rapport with the beneficiaries, who are forced to seek help because of the war.

However, our social centre is small – two small rooms and a bathroom. Since the start of the war, the number of people coming to the centre has continued to rise, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to welcome them properly and provide them with support.

Our Emmaus charity shop, located in Vynnyky in the Lviv suburbs, is close to our community house, and reopened in April. However, the air raid warnings and risk of being bombed force us to take refuge in bomb shelters and close the shop regularly. This is having a major impact on our income-generating activity, which is so important for our community and our customers. Once again, thanks to the funding provided by the Emmaus groups, via the Emmaus Europe Ukraine Fund, we are able to maintain our community life and help the displaced people and war victims.

The Lviv charity shop only opens three times a week. On the other hand, the furniture restoration workshop is practically back to normal, and people are placing orders once again. We are delighted about this.

In April, we received a container of humanitarian aid from the Emmaus groups via Emmaus Lublin (the third since the start of the conflict). We are working with a range of associations and volunteers across Ukraine to provide support where it is needed most. In April, we helped the children’s hospital in Chernihiv and Buda Hospital in the Kharkiv region. Much-needed humanitarian aid was delivered to Ovruch, Kharkiv and Chernihiv.

Your community supported the homeless before the war. How are you organising your solidarity work at this time?

Our day-to-day solidarity work continues despite it all, and we are helping everyone who needs it. We distributed around 800 lunches on the streets in April, in addition to the work done at the social centre.

We are also helping the residents of Lviv who are hosting displaced people by providing bedding, mattresses, pushchairs, etc.

We were unable to organise our traditional Easter events for homeless and vulnerable people in the Lviv Region because of the constant threat of air strikes. However, we did hand out 250 food kits in the city centre. We are also meeting the needs of war victims and displaced people: clothing, shoes, toys, and books for 50 children from Mariupol who are now living in Vynnyky.

What do you currently need?

The social support centre premises and equipment are old. We haven’t currently got enough washing machines for all the displaced people to wash their clothes. We are therefore eagerly awaiting the start of the new building reconstruction work so that we can set in motion this initiative.

We also have a major fuel issue in Ukraine, we have to join long queues to buy 5-10 litres of fuel, the maximum authorised amount. We also still need a lot of humanitarian aid to help the regions that have been liberated, and those where violent fighting is continuing, and where people need daily assistance.

How are the companions dealing with the situation?

We currently have 30 companions living in the community. As ever, we are continuing with our everyday work (collecting donated goods from donation drop-off containers, sorting the goods, etc.) This year’s celebrations for Orthodox Easter were not festive. We got together for a breakfast, and we arranged a ceremony to commemorate our community’s founder, Olesya Sanotska, who died six years ago in April 2016. She lives on in our hearts.

An additional companion has joined our three companions who had already enlisted in the armed forces. They are dear to our hearts, and we respect their desire to defend Ukraine.

Our companions are working hard. Air raid warnings are very frequent and often the companions do not want to make their way to shelters, because the raid is far from the community. It is tough for everyone, both physically and mentally.

Nevertheless, the Oselya community’s work is important and enjoys a high profile in Ukraine. A US journalist showed great interest in our work and visited the community to make a report about our daily lives.

How do you see the future?

The situation in Ukraine is very tense, and the war is intensifying. The war, with numerous crimes perpetrated by the Russian army, is calling into question the future of democratic values.

We do all our work with great faith that Ukraine will emerge victorious, and the hope that our country will soon experience peace, and that we will be able to resume a normal way of life.

We express our profound gratitude to all the Emmaus groups for their help and support for our work, and for our struggle for the European values of solidarity, justice and friendship.

Defending human rights / Migration News Ukraine

Georgia: Emmaus Geo is supporting refugees

The war in Ukraine has triggered a wave of solidarity in Europe and around the world. The Emmaus groups located in the countries neighbouring Ukraine are helping refugees, with each group running initiatives that draw on their know-how, such as the initiative run by Emmaus Geo in Georgia.

Since it was founded, Emmaus Geo has been working with the Georgians displaced following the annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Russia in 2008. Working in several locations in the Tbilisi suburbs, on the brownfield sites where many displaced people have settled, Emmaus Geo hands out clothing, hot meals and food. This Emmaus group also helps them with their administrative and legal formalities.

Since late February, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Emmaus Geo has been doing the same work with Ukrainians fleeing the fighting: handing out crockery, clothing (over 500kg since early March), beds for children, and food. Thanks to Emmaus Europe’s Ukraine Fund, the association is going to be able to provide over 500 hygiene kits for refugees.

At the present time, over 30,000 people from Ukraine have taken refuge in Georgia, and roughly 500 new people arrive every day. They travel by plane or car, via Poland, Armenia, Austria or Turkey, in the main.

Just like Croatia, Georgia has had strong links with Ukraine since the various wars that have brought it into conflict with Russia. In 1993 and 2008, Ukraine supported the Georgian army by sending soldiers to fight side by side with the Georgians. The Russian invasion has further strengthened the bonds between the two countries.

Emmaus Geo – the movement’s first member group in Georgia

Emmaus Geo was founded in 2015 and aims to help the most deprived people in Georgia by supporting and housing vulnerable people, and handing out essentials (clothing, food, school supplies, etc.). An Emmaus group since 2017, that same year also saw Emmaus Geo acquire a residential building enabling the group to house five companions involved in its income-generating activity. The association’s main activities are collecting and selling clothing in two shops located in Tbilisi and Kvareli, as well as outreach work with vulnerable communities in the Tbilisi suburbs, supporting roughly 300 families.

Coordinated solidarity in response to the situation in Ukraine

The Ukraine Fund, comprising donations made by Emmaus groups worldwide, supports the everyday work of our groups in Ukraine and Poland. This fund is also used to support one-off initiatives set up in the countries of Eastern Europe to primarily house and support refugees. Emmaus Europe centralises the donations and is supporting the groups based on the Ukraine war-related expenses that they incur every month.

Defending human rights / Migration News

European Social Economy Summit in Strasbourg

Emmaus Europe held a roundtable with its circular economy partners to coincide with the release of the European Action Plan for the Social Economy presented at the 5-6 May summit.

With RREUSE, Emmaus France, ENVIE Federation, City of Paris and Les Canaux, Emmaus Europe reiterated the vital role played by social economy stakeholders in the circular economy. As reuse pioneers, our organisations create more jobs than all the other stakeholders in the same reuse sector, according to a French study by Ademe.

However, they are now facing competition from the second-hand market, partly because of European waste sorting regulations, but primarily because of unremitting global overproduction and the abolition of import quotas in the early 2000s. We stressed the importance of developing European regulations to limit overproduction and overconsumption, notably by working upstream on product repairability. We also suggested carving out a bigger space for social economy stakeholders and moving away from the ethos of competing with non-social enterprises.

The French participants also shared their experience of implementing Extended Producer Responsibility through producer responsibility organisations (PROs), and the fact that this experience has spurred them to call for reform of their governance. PROs are currently solely managed by producers, and must make more room for social economy stakeholders and public institutions so that funds are shared out in a more social and environmentally-friendly way.

The roundtable participants all praised the progress made in the action plan, which is the first of its kind. However, they stressed the need to go further at individual Member State level for its upcoming implementation, notably by linking up with environmental and circular economy regulations, and by securing state or producer funding, so that local government does not shoulder all the burden.

The recording of the meeting and other information will be available over the coming weeks by clicking here.

Circular economy / The environment European Union News