Shakti Shardia, a Spirit River medic, is heading to the Greek island of Lesbos to offer aid to incoming migrants from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.A local oil field medic is heading to the front lines of the European migrant crisis to volunteer her help.
Shakti Shardia, who lives in Spirit River, is volunteering in Greece, where some 2,000 migrants arrive every day from neighbouring Turkey, which is hosting about 2.5 million Syrians who have fled that country’s civil war.
Shardia said she’s been out of work all month, so she’d like to make herself useful.
“I’d rather go over there and be a little bit more broke and in debt but know that I’ve actually done something rather than just sit here,” she said.
She leaves from Calgary Thursday morning and arrives Saturday on the island of Lesbos. She’ll be working in Moria, one of two processing centres overwhelmed by migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere.
“I’m going to work as many hours as I can doing whatever I can. I know that they desperately need medic care over there,” Shardia said. She added that she was galvanized by the hardships endured by the migrants when crossing from Turkey to small Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.
Shardia is going there with a friend who works as an emergency responder; her friend’s husband, who was in the military, has worked before with an organization called The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq, founded by Montreal businessman Steve Maman. Shardia said she and her friend will be working under that group in Moria.
“(The migrants) basically come there, we dry them up, clean them up, fix them up, and then they’re sent on the next part of their journey.”
After paying smugglers thousands to make the crossing to Greece, most of the migrants attempt to reach Germany and Scandinavia. Although 70% of them are men, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Shardia said she will be working in a camp for women and children.
Shardia said she plans to be there and do whatever she can to help until she can’t afford to stay any longer.
“It’s an overwhelming and unnatural situation.”
Shardia plans to set up a Go Fund Me crowd-funding web page to raise funds for the site, which needs a generator and washing machines, she said.