The Bobbing Jacket
How more than 11.000 lives changed forever
Back in June 2013, American entrepreneur Christopher Catrambone and his family were cruising on the Mediterranean Sea on a 24-meter luxury yacht. At the same time thousands of migrants fleeing the war were dying (and they still do!) in the same Sea attempting to reach Europe on overloaded and shabby boats on the world’s deadliest maritime migrant routes.
Although mr Catrambone is a migrant too, since he left Louisiana and settled with his family in Malta in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home, those facts seemed to belong to different worlds.
Those two realities crashed together when Regina, his Italian wife, spotted a winter jacket bobbing on the water. When the skipper told them it probably belonged to a migrant who had attempted the Central Mediterranean crossing and had not made it, the Catrambones were struggling: how to reconcile their idyllic experience with what migrants were facing on the same stretch of water?
By the end of the cruise they were already looking for a solution.
Few months later, following several tragedies around the Italian island of Lampedusa and the Pope’s call to private citizens to act to reduce human suffering and reverse the tide of indifference to our fellow man, Christopher and his wife took a decision that would affect their lives (and those of thousands of migrants) forever: in June 2014 the couple spent $8millions of their own money, buying a former U.S military training craft (The Phoenix), inflatable boats and drones in order to set up and conduct their own rescue operations. The first private search-and-rescue charity is born.
Since then MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) saved more than 11.600 men, women and children.
Using specialist search and rescue vessels, humanitarian drone capabilities, high speed rescue launches and a highly skilled team of rescuers, medics and post rescue care personnel we are able to assist and rescue those who risk their lives on these deadly crossings.
Says Christina Lejman, fundraising officer with MOAS since June of 2015.
The lives we save are always our most prominent motivation. No one deserves to die at sea and one cannot put a value to the potential of each person pulled from the water. The efforts of the whole team are very strongly tied to our shared belief that regardless of other factors, no person deserves to die attempting the crossing. When we hear stories of children’s recovery and families reuniting following our rescues we are all motivated to do all we can to ensure the future success of MOAS and its operations.
In December 2015 they launched their mission on the Aegan Sea, on the waters between Turkey and Greece, where the flow of migrants has increased more and the death rate continues to climb.
The MOAS will operate there with two high-speed rescue vessels named in the memory of Aylan and Galip Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach shocked the world becoming a symbol of this migrant crisis, and his brother, who also died trying to escape war.
Being the first 100% privately founded search-and-rescue organization with no state funding means facing an every-day challenge to ensure enough funds to cover the operations.
Funding is always a challenge for us. We rely on the generosity of individuals, private companies and grant making foundations to keep our operations afloat. We urge anyone looking for a way to contribute to our cause to visit our website and donate at www.moas.eu/donate as every penny counts for us and we value every contribution to our mission.
— Tommaso Murè —
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More informations about MOAS: http://www.moas.eu/
