It may have started as a short visit, but Amy Randell’s passion for helping others has kept her in a refugee camp in Greece for the better part of two years.
Randell is teaching and assisting 30,000 refugees at a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.
The 27-year-old Barrie native attended Algonquin Ridge Elementary School between 2003 and 2007, before going to Innisdale Secondary School from 2007 to 2011. As she is now at the helm of some classes herself, teaching seven- to nine-year-old classes and then later in the day 10- to 12-year-olds. She teaches English, math, art, music, and physical education.
Now that she's at the front of the class, Randell thinks back to those who helped shape her passion for helping others.
“The main teacher I thought of was my Grade 6 teacher, Ms. Welsman,” Randell told BarrieToday over the phone. “She was a really hands-on teacher. She made every lesson really fun and really engaged us, and as a teacher myself I try to think about how much fun I had during her lessons and try to make the lessons for my students impactful and memorable.”
Her time at high school was just as eye-opening for Randell, who said she had a lot of great music teachers who she thought of as great friends as well.
After university, Randell moved to Germany to teach and it is there that she became connected with a church that was taking a short-term trip to Lesbos to work at a refugee camp.
“Being a teacher, I had some time off during the Christmas holidays and thought sure, I’ll go on this short-term trip,” she said. “Then I got here and was like, wow, it is still very much under crisis. It is so much bigger than what we hear; personally, I hadn't heard anything about it on the news.”
Randell said the Mória Refugee Camp received barely any news coverage in the time she was there, but that changed drastically on Sept. 8 when a fire destroyed the camp and made headlines on major news outlets around the world.
“It was a series of multiple fires that burned it to the ground, intentionally set by a handful of refugees who led a revolt and set the camp on fire, which is just rubble now,” Randell said. “It's one of the only times we’ve made headline news, despite the fact that there are so many people here seeking refuge.”
The new camp is set up a few kilometres away and Randell says it looks like what one might think of when they think of a refugee camp. A big United Nations tent is set up, with other tents lined up row by row.
The previous camp was full of handmade wooden huts with what Randell referred to as a “mish-mash of thousands of people living on top of each other; no sanitation and sewage everywhere.”
“I wouldn't say I feel unsafe, but I am a young woman, I’m blonde with blue eyes and I stand out a little bit,” Randell said. “Honestly, as a woman anywhere it can be unsafe and I would not go out at night with 30,000 people around, no matter where I was.”
Randell says any violence is usually between the refugees themselves due to the cultural tensions mixed into the camp.
Randell’s parents were directors of the Bayside Mission Centre from 2003 to 2012 and the family attended the Salvation Army church on Lillian Crescent.
While they her parents nervous before she left for the refugee camp, they have become her biggest supporters.
“They’ve come a long way, for sure,” she said. “When I first came, they were worried about how I would support myself with no income. They were also under the impression that maybe this was like a warzone, they’d never been here obviously so they didn’t know.
“They are extremely supportive, though, and they knew I wanted to help," Randell added. "They’re my No. 1 supporters and have influenced my life in so many ways.”
While there can be tough days, whether being far away from family and friends or sleeping in tough conditions, Randell says she enjoys the positives she sees everyday.
“The look on faces when they come to the camp is breathtaking sometimes,” said Randell. “We’re only eight kilometres from Turkey and people are coming here from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, the Congo, Somalia, and along the way some have seen family members die. But still, they have smiles on their faces at the thought and hope of what could be. That some kind of better life is out there for them.
“Nothing keeps you going quite like that.”
