The Tree of Hope: How The Youth in Ritsona Refugee Camp Came Together As A Community
Lighthouse Relief’s Youth Engagement Space (YES) is a creative haven for youth aged 16 to 25 in Ritsona refugee camp in central Greece. Lighthouse’s youth programming in Ritsona began over a year ago with The Tree of Hope project, thanks to the will and drive of several people.
By Daphne Morgen
Like much of the world, I had spent 2015 reading the news, and the images of thousands of refugees arriving in rubber dinghies on the shores of Europe were etched in my mind. The first thing that struck me when I arrived in camp was the silence. 2016–17 was an exceptionally cold winter and the snow fell, adding a layer of velvet that blended the white caravans together and gave the the camp a softer focus.
My name is Daphne and I arrived in Greece on 11 December 2016, after a friend from grad school invited me to join her working in the Female Friendly Space with Lighthouse Relief in Ritsona Refugee Camp. With my life in significant transition, I packed a suitcase and flew to Greece.
The Female Friendly Space ran out of a small canvas tent, which we did our best to keep warm and inviting. We conducted daily outreach, going door to door to each caravan in the camp, letting residents know about programme activities for that day.
In the process, I got to know many young people, who gradually began to share their stories. They showed me pictures of their homes, abandoned or destroyed by war, and of their family members, killed or far away. Among the youth that I encountered there was a pervasive sense of boredom and listlessness. They were stuck in Greece, waiting in limbo. Waiting for the EU to decide their fate. There was no school, no work and no adolescent programming.
Shortly after Christmas 2016, I decided to propose a collective youth art project in the form of a mural. An organization in camp gave me permission to use the facade of a container which currently serves as the camp library. On the first day, I met with a small group of young people and suggested they design a tree with hope as the theme. One teenage boy immediately replied that he had none. He confided in me that he sometimes wished he could die because he had no one in this world. “Hope is leaving here,” he told me.
The Tree of Hope mural took two weeks to complete. First, we attached plywood to the container to conceal the corrugated metal and create a smooth “canvas.” I held workshops where youth created and decorated flowers and other imaginative forms from recycled water bottles, painted in every hue. These were eventually attached to decorate the mural. The youth who had so bluntly confessed his lack of hope became the ingenious and resourceful creator of the tree itself, constructing the trunk out of plaster and chicken wire and molding it to perfection.
Every day, young people showed up shivering in their winter jackets, cold but always enthusiastic. I encouraged them to play their music, and days were spent between moments of dancing and laughter and silent focus, paint brushes in hand. As a way of encouraging community ownership and involvement in this project, the youth designed leaf-shaped paper cutouts that they circulated through the camp, inviting people to share their thoughts and wishes. These were laminated and attached to the branches of the tree.
“Before we started the Tree of Hope, I was bored in the camp — there was nothing to do. But then I met everyone involved in the mural and we started to create beautiful things together. This was one of my best memories of Ritsona” remembers Ferhad Heme, 18, from Syria, who was integral to the early development of the YES space. He is currently living in Germany.
“It [participating in the Tree of Hope] let me find hope in my heart and made me stand up again after giving up for a long time” explains Amer Ali, 23, of Palestinian origin and currently living in Sweden.
Upon finishing, we hosted a camp-wide celebration to display the hard work and successful completion of the mural. The idea that this project had come to a close and that the young people who had busied themselves every day would go back to doing nothing was unbearable for me.
A 17-year-old whose eyes shone with intense kindness and compassion, and who had not missed a single day of mural painting, approached me as we were putting away the paint and equipment for the last time. With an almost desperate earnestness he said, “Daphne. Please. You must continue this. There is nothing else for us to do. This has been…amazing. Let’s do another project.”
That night, I wrote to the management of Lighthouse Relief asking to run a 3-month arts-based youth programme. As I did so, the words of the poem painted by the youth on the finished Tree of Hope ran through my mind;
Hold on to your hope
One day you will fly like a bird
We the youth want peace for all
Peace is art…
Peace is music…
Peace is love…
Peace is freedom
Tomorrow will be a better day
Two weeks later, I was given the go ahead to start work on the first Youth Engagement Space for Lighthouse Relief, and so it all began…
Daphne Morgen currently works with Lighthouse Relief as Programme Manager for the Storytelling Without Borders project. Over a year ago, Daphne was the drive and inspiration behind a pilot youth programme in Ritsona refugee camp, going on to manage the new Youth Engagement Space. She holds an MA in Human Security and Peacebuilding and has 10+ years of experience in social service work and arts-based programming, primarily with young people.
