We are a Parea (a circle of like-minded people), a group of people who join forces to support the people of Ikaria. You are one of them too!

The topic of solidarity has been on my mind for some time, since the beginning of the crisis to be precise. But first we had to find a suitable platform, which took me and Martin Bachmann the whole of 2012. Ursula’s Ikaria started very small, but suddenly so many users became aware of it that we discovered the potential of this website and continued to expand it to what it is today. One thing led to another. Everything started moving. I had unsuspectingly thrown a stone into the water, and the concentric circles grew larger and larger and reached more and more people. That’s when I really became aware of the power of the Internet and networking. Now we have created the basis and a serious starting point with this website „Ursula’s Ikaria“.

Practiced solidarity

The idea for the support projects came from you and my initial intention was to support you as best I could with my website so that something could get rolling. However, I soon realized that the hurdles of bureaucracy, language and mentality in Greece were almost insurmountable and that we could hardly achieve anything in cooperation with the various associations for various reasons.

However, the crisis was becoming more and more noticeable and that was precisely why it was particularly important to act! Ikaria lived exclusively from tourism by the Greek lower and middle classes, but this had practically collapsed. So no more money came to the island. The state is on a course of austerity, especially when it comes to schools and health care! All the gains of the last twenty years were reversed virtually overnight. Thousands of state employees were laid off, schools were merged, health clinics were no longer maintained and the entire state administrative apparatus was relocated to the larger islands of Samos, Syros or Mytilene for reasons of cost-cutting with fatal consequences for the islanders! Regardless of the fact that there were no or only rudimentary ship connections from Ikaria to these islands! In any case, a strenuous, expensive journey lasting several days had to be undertaken!

So I decided to take action! And you?

We can’t improve the world! But I have decided to make a difference here on a small, local and targeted basis. With united forces we can do it!

I am constantly looking for projects worthy of support and try to get in direct contact with those responsible/affected. Since I want to prevent your donation from leaking away somewhere, falling into the wrong hands or being handled irresponsibly, I will personally supervise our local campaigns and ensure that our donations get into the hands of the beneficiaries without any hassle.

Read about our current fundraising campaigns:

Heating oil for schools

Elementary school: roofing of the toilets