This year GAiN UK is turning 5 and in celebration of this milestone, we have held an Online Network Gathering and Celebration Event! Thank you to everyone who attended these events. In this post Sarah Patel has summarised some of what GAiN UK has achieved over the past 5 years. This page will give you the opportunity to respond to our Celebration Event and hear a little about what the next fears year have in store.

As we prepared ourselves for what the press is calling “the hell of Moria”, we became more fearful as we read articles, books, saw photos and watched footage of the camp. We prayed for courage, for protection, for provision, for wisdom, for compassion….

We arrived in Lesbos to meet our team and get some informative, relevant and insightful training: a great start to meet such special, dedicated, wise people and feel safe together.

Back in October, a joint GAiN team from the UK and Netherlands went to volunteer at Moria, the new arrivals refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece. What followed was a series of events that were neither planned nor expected, but resulted in another team returning in February to assemble large tents donated from the Mission Impossible set!

I’ll admit it. I’m one of the millions who binge-watched the new Marie Kondo Netflix series ‘Tidying Up’ over the holidays. It hit me at just the right time. My house was filled with clutter, disused baby toys, bills from 2009 and clothes that no longer fit. I’d been itching to start 2019 with a fresh mind and a clean house, and Marie Kondo and her patented joy-sparking and folding methods were just the push I needed to get started.

Danielle shares about how the mission to send desperately needed supplies to refugees in Lesbos began with a little help from Tom Cruise! Whilst out in Greece with a GAiN volunteer team one of Danielle’s friends got in touch to say that he had an idea for how we might be able to get some bigger, better tents to the people who are facing winter with inadequate shelter.

This project started when Lizelle Pieterse (with GAiN South Africa) had a heart to mobilise people within South Africa to respond to the pockets of poverty on their door step. This desire has now grown into a vision to give children who are living on the margins and would otherwise have been forgotten, a fighting chance at life.