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Ripples: Ways Anyone Can Support Refugees

Have you ever thrown a stone in a still pond?   You can easily get mesmerized by the ripples that radiate from the initial disruption.   Ripples came to mind many times when I worked for a week with a humanitarian trip at a refugee camp in Greece.   I saw ripples that are hard and difficult to observe and even worse for the people themselves who experienced them.  PTSD, self-harming, and depression run rampant throughout the refugee camps.  You can see it in their eyes.  You can see it in their posture.  By the time someone has made it to a refugee camp, the initial disruption in their calm pond has already happened and it was big enough to cause waves.   As waves radiate out, they become slightly smaller, but there nonetheless.  There will still be ripples cresting up and waning down as refugees transition to settlement and asylum in other countries, establish new careers, and build up new lives.  The ripples will be seen for years, decades, and multiple generations.  
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Tangible Help For Refugees at Ritsona Camp

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When I was a little kid, my mother made a superhero cape out of some simple fabric.  It was actually my brother’s cape, but we all played with it together all the same.  We’d have adventures where we saved people from the “bad guys.” Of course, when you’re little, you believe you can save anyone and fix anything.   As we grow older, it can feel a little harder to channel that same faith that you can save the world.  But, we can all still have a few great capers where we fix some things and save a little sliver of the world.  One week in a town in a dusty camp in Greece, we plotted one really fun caper that required others to help us pull it off.   You see, we had been working for just a few days at a camp set up to house refugees.  Small and large families alike called this camp home for weeks and months on end and were at the receiving end of charity for everything in their daily life.  After a few days of walking through the makeshift thrift store that had been set up for re
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What did you do at Ritsona Refugee Camp?

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I’ll be honest, I didn’t know a ton about the Syrian crisis until this week.   I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what is happening.   What I did know is that there are thousands of people in limbo because countries are closing their doors.   Going into this trip, we tried not to have too many expectations, and I’m glad we came into it with that perspective.   I tried to go into this week with eyes wide open to see and learn about this population and their needs.   I’m a doer.  If you hang around me long enough, you realize that I like to get S@$# done.  So, it can be very much against my nature to simply soak in an experience and not look for a solution.  I can’t say I did that completely because by the end of the second night I was already searching online for ways to get even more involved.  BUT, I will say that as a whole, I did well to soak in the experience and learn.   While I didn’t have any major expectations for the week, we did actually get our h
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FAQ’s About Serving Refugees in Greece

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We got a lot of questions about our time in Greece, especially about our week at the refugee camp.  So, we compiled a few of the top questions we got to help give you a picture of what the week was like.   What were you doing there? Learn.  We came to help at Ritsona through Cross Cultural Solutions (CCS), a social enterprise that deploys teams all over the world to understand cultures and serve.  The refugee program is just one of many of their programs.  Why is Greece involved?   The biggest answer I can give at this point is proximity.  Greece is really close, but not directly hit by the wars and strife happening in Syria and nearby countries. Because they are willing to accept them as well. How many refugees are there in Greece?  While the number changes daily, a rough recent estimate is 62,000 refugees in Greece.  Ritsona has capacity for around 900 people and they are very close, if not at capacity.   Who lives at the camp? Most residents at Ritsona are
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Gathering & Gallery: Community Brought Together Through Photography

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I was honored to help plan Dr. Cary LaCouture's photography gallery event on November 15.  My scope involved invitation design, to event layout, to organizing the collections, to ordering photos, and even being coined "boss" for the evening so the artists could enjoy the show.  
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Logo Design

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Honored to help Summit Accounting Solutions  with the design and launch of the new logo for their online portal for clients to upload and access important files! Introducing Summit S.O.S.! Learn more about their services on their website: http://www.summitaccountingsolutions.com/
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Cost Segregation Analysis One-Pager

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Proud To Present SAS's Cost Segregation Analysis One-Pager.  This was a great opportunity to blend my architectural knowledge with graphics and support an accounting firm!
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