I have met many people in my life who help, support and accompany those most in need. The Greek couple I met in Lesbos not only help others, but they gave up everything they had to be with these people and be there for them. I have learned more about helping from them than from anyone else.

It’s been five years now. That’s how long our friendship with Katerina and Nikos has lasted. I ended up here completely by accident thanks to the volunteer Paulina who was here at the time. I was so keen to meet her that I booked tickets for the next day. Paulina sent me an interview with Katerina and Nikos, and she said I had to come here not for her, but for them.

Watching the interview Paulina sent me before I arrived, when she was trying (without much difficulty) to convince me to come, I remember Katerina and Nikos sitting in front of the place that used to be their tavern and is now home to everyone. In the footage, on the wall behind them, hung a plaque – a fragment of the boat on which the first refugees arrived here. Painted blue, with a symbol of their devotion to the people hand-painted in white: ‘Home for All’. At the time a completely foreign sign to me, today very much mine, as I feel at home here.

Katerina and Nikos have faced morally difficult choices many times over these past eight years. They have always seen the human being, not the rules. The rules that govern this world have to be put aside when you see that they have led people to flee their own homelands, to terror, to fear for their lives and their loved ones. Rules that arrange this world in such a way that they have no place in it, that hurt and exclude them, are unacceptable.

I have become touched by the memories, but they are worth it, because they are memories of the fact that goodness is not lacking in this world. By supporting Katerina and Nikos, there will be even more of it. That’s why we are here. That’s why we are with them. We came here when Lesbos had already disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers, but there were still fund-raisers on the internet to help the refugees. We recently counted that if all of the meals declared by the various organisations went to the camp, the refugees would eat seven times a day. Meanwhile, it is only “Home for All” that can, in addition to the official catering, feed the people in the camp.

“Home for All” has prepared around 4.5 million meals over the past years and helped hundreds of thousands of people. The numbers are impressive, but for us people are not numbers. Katerina and Nikos cater to their individual needs and already have friends all over the world. They are those who, thanks to them, have become convinced that there is a place for them in this world.

Here, every penny of your money is well spent. It goes to the specific needs of people we know, who know us, who trust us and who simply cannot manage without us. I guarantee it and I ask for your support!