Jul 02, 2016 at 09:45 am

Update on Housing and current needs. Our point of view on the overall situation in Vienna.

Update posted by Andrea Oterova

It is becoming very hard to find housing for refugees since March 2016, Diakonie and Fluchtlinge have an extremely limited amount of offers, while there are, to the best of our knowledge, over 1700 people on the housing waiting list in Vienna. Transfers between camps also became more difficult unless there are serious underlying health reasons requiring a move. We are still looking for a home for refugees which we help, some of which include pregnant women who live in camps where they cannot cook and conditions are not optimal.

On the positive side however, we see a lot of efforts by Caritas, Diakonie, the Red Cross and other organisations and volunteers in terms of improving the life of refugees in camps and outside of camps in Vienna. There are many language and sports courses, passes for social and cultural events, new refugee job fairs for people with asylum, health services are becoming more accessible, emergency camps have closed and people have been transferred to better places with better hygienic conditions. From our point of view, even though the overall situation of refugees is still very hard and mainly the ones in camps need a lot of support, it has changed immensely since September 2015 when we started to get involved with helping. There is still a lot to do but we consider it important to appreciate what Vienna and NGOs, volunteers are doing for refugees, many of them surely realize that. We will see what happens after the election, but we have seen significant improvements and efforts here in Vienna.

We would like to THANK our most active team members and people who joined us in helping refugees we support for their great support, advice and hard work, thank you so much both Abdullahs from the Red Corss and Primavesigasse, Benedikt, Courtney, Cheryl, Glenn, Ethel, Hajer, Merce, Sarah, Sarir, Sonia, Virginie, thank you to all the hosts, mainly the ones who were very busy with refugees lately, namely Andrea, Martina and Guntram, Michael, Verena and the family!!! Thank you so much to all the donors, the VBC club and all the private donors for your generosity! And finally, we are very thankful to all the people advising us in Diakonie, Caritas and the Red Cross.

THE CURRENT NEEDS are: Toiletries and food DM vouchers and HOFER vouchers (for housed refugees with no benefits arriving -many times they have to be without money for months; and for camps) Financial donations for necessities for refugees on low budget and camps Financial donations for metro tickets for camps (camps can get them for cheaper) Financial donations for cosmetics and basic needs for the soon to come newborn babies (a girl and a boy) ALL RECEIPTS WILL BE POSTED as always.

Back to campaign page