I saw some worrying and scary news about an unknown virus, CORONAVIRUS! First I thought that it is only a lie, a least I was wanting it to be a lie :( But after a few months, it arrived in the country that I was living in, Greece. I knew that normal people don't worry about it as I, but it was normal in my situation, I was in a Camp, which was 40km far from the city, and nobody was caring about us, even the government ...
Camp becomes like a graveyard, I was not able to feel any happiness in the camp, nobody had good knowledge about the virus, but they all knew that it is very dangerous and they may lose their dearest person. There was not any class on the camp anymore, the camp was fully locked down, we were not able to go out for any reason, There was not any doctor in the camp, around camp was full of polices that came to suppression us not to protect. Nobody was giving information about the virus at the camp, they were blaming us when we were together, But they didn't care about why we are packed together, there were some small buildings and tents and they were putting every 100 people on one building or tent. And I was sure that the same situation is in every camp, not only our camp.
I was very worried, but I tried to stay relax, I started thinking about how can I do something to ameliorate the situation, And I understood that the best way to help other refugees is to give them more information about COVID-19, And I started searching on internet about it, and what I found made me worry more than before, was not anything like medicine or vaccination for COVID-19, and the only way to protect ourself from the virus is to know more about it and fallow tips provided by WHO and other healthy organs.
So, I decelerated my target, and I started thinking about how can I inform other refugees, And I finally found a way, I decided to design a website with information about the virus, but it was not easy as it was on the first view, refugees are talking in many different languages, and the website cant be only in one language, but that was not the only problem, I didn't have a stable internet connection, I didn't have any possibilities, My only power was my laptop and my programming skill. But I started doing my best!
After 1 month I managed to finish the first version of the Covid Media website, but it was not ready to publish, because as I said I first needed to translate it to languages that refugees are speaking, As I wrote on the about page, I understand 4 languages and I started translating the website into 4 languages (English, Persian, Turkish and Greek). In Jun I finally managed to publish the first version of Covid Media.
But making a website along was not into, I needed to spread the website between refugees, and it was not something easy, I started spreading it on refugee communities, and after that, with the H.E.R.o team I started spreading some posters about COVID-19 and the website address in the Camp, Till now (11.12.2020), the website reached to 17.000 views, and it is acceptable, but I still think that I need to spread it more ...
Now I would like to speak a little about good things that happened during this project :) 2 Months after publishing the first version of Covid Media, I met a madam name Ellen F. she was working with an organ named Peacejam, She was very kind and told me about Peacejam and met me with Peacejam, She was also interested on what I was doing and started helping me with the project, She told me about Peacejam's mentors, and we made a team for Covid Media, and they all started helping me for the website, One of the Peacejam mentor's told me about a Conference that was on November, and invited me to join the Conference and gave me chance to talk about my project in the Conference. And also Mis. Ellen nominated me for a program and I won a prize for my project.
I'm still working on the project, and you can join news from the project through Covid Media's
Facebook page, or with the #covidmediainfo hashtag on Facebook.
www.covidmediainfo.com