RefVoice

There is a moment in Tim De Keersmaecker and Jakob Brossmann’s documentary “Lampedusa in Winter” when a journalist asks one of the locals about the refugee crisis and the inhabitant of the island answers the question with another question: “Why don’t you ask the refugees themselves?”. I was watching this particular documentary when it suddenly struck me. It really was a question that needed to be put. Why don’t we ask them, really? Is it because we are afraid of these people invading our country? Is it because we are afraid of their answers? Whatever the reason might be, there really is a gap in the field of journalism as far as the voice of the refugees is concerned.

RefVoice is an orchestrated effort, not only to help refugees, but also acknowledge them as fellow humans. One does not simply need food and water to have a decent life. RefVoice is a web platform where refugees can voice their opinions and tell their stories to the public, not through a representative, but speak for themselves.

In fact RefVoice is a fight for integration. Our goal is to give refugees a media platform and help them to get access in art in order to express themselves. Besides, what is the point of living in a neighbourhood if your neighbours are racists? The only way to complete integration is only through culture and understanding.

At the moment RefVoice has a trans-media outlook. More specific, it is comprised by stories, children drawings, interviews and videos. In this weekend’s hackathon called Hack the Camp our team has grown bigger, since we met five wonderful refugees interested in photography. So we are going to focus on a particular project. Weekly workshops in collaboration with professional photographers are going to be conducted where they will teach refugees firstly technical skills and then the refugees will take their own photos. When we have enough photos we are going to create an album and sell it to earn money and buy cameras for the refugees who are going to become our first photoreporters.

We chose photography because it is easy to communicate a message to the public without assistance from translators. Moreover creating a photo-album is a means of funding our project, along with crowdfunding of course from our profile in Indiegogo. Indiegogo is one of the most well-known sites for fundraising.

To conclude, the problem RefVoice is solving is that there are many stories for refugees, but there aren’t many stories from refugees. Through the communication of their stories and their work a position can be established in our society and they can gain respect from the public simultaneously.

The team: Mary Bouli, Stavroula Pollatou, Maria Vasilakou, Hameedullah Faizi, Abbas Jafferi, Rafi Satari, Ali Ghanzawi, Moussa Havtay