Refugee | The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum

A Refugee Camp on a Greek Island Opens Its Arms to Middle Eastern Asylum Seekers

February 25, 2024, 12 noon – 2pm

Jane Abbott

Why do Middle Eastern refugees still try to reach Europe via Greece as they continue to arrive at night in small, often inflatable dinghies from Turkey? How are they treated once they arrive? Who are they? How long do they stay in a refugee camp before being allowed to move on? Who operates the camp and funds it? Who are the volunteers who staff them?

This is where refugee organizations come in. There are far too many refugees for single individuals to help. The asylum seekers who find their way to the Greek refugee camp Offene Arme are lucky ones. We see videos of those less fortunate but others make it successfully to Europe. Offene Arme (Open Arms from German) represents a Greek refugee organization on the island of Chios near the Turkish mainland that has been working for eight years to help asylum seekers survive and prepare for a new life. What is its story and what do the many volunteers associated with it do?

Jane Abbott has a history of association with Greece that goes back almost 60 years. She spent a summer in Greece as an exchange student and then earned her bachelor’s degree at the American College in Greece (Deree College) in 1967. She spent three years in Greece before she returned to the US to pursue graduate studies. Once Jane finished her master’s degree and taught literature, philosophy, and history at the college level, she entered the US Peace Corps and spent seven years in Nepal.

Jane taught at a village school near Gorkha in Nepal and then taught master’s degree Candidates at the University of Nepal. She also taught ESL to Nepali students and worked as a contractor for the Peace Corps identifying and evaluating sites for future Peace Corps Volunteers. With her family, after seven years, Jane moved to the Solomon Islands in Melanesia where she ran training programs. She also worked in Kiribati in Micronesia visiting and supporting Peace Corp Volunteers on site. After returning to the US, Jane completed her Ph.D. and taught integrated humanities for a number of years at community colleges. This course was primarily about the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and throughout this time, Jane has taken small groups of travelers from various universities and colleges to Greece, a total of at least 25 times.. .

In 2017 Jane learned about an organization on the Greek island of Chios that had been started in 2015 when Pothiti Kitromylidi (known affectionately as Toula) saw refugees on the beach near her house and gave them food and water and a place to stay. Since that time, thousands of refugees have arrived on the island which is only several miles from the western Turkish border from whence they come on rickety boats. Jane has worked with the umbrella NGO, Offene Arme (Open Arms in German) three times, and she will explain the different roles she has played in the organization as a volunteer, one of 2,500 volunteers to assist refugees on Chios over the past eight years.

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The Speaker

Jane AbbottSFWAF Member

Jane Abbott graduated fromThe American College of Greece in Athens, Greece. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer and Peace Corps staff in Nepal, the Solomon Islands, and Kiribati. She earned a Ph.D. from Colorado State University in community college leadership. She taught mostly integrated humanities in community colleges in Colorado and served as a dean for 12 years. She has also participated in three short-term Fulbrights in Paraguay, Germany, and Thailand. Most recently, Jane directed a program for first generation, low income students at Santa Fe Community College.
During Madagascar’s crises of 2002 and 2009, Dan documented human rights abuses and communicated with the US State Department and international human rights organizations. From these experiences and others, he has a unique perspective on U.S. policy towards Madagascar.

An avid botanist, Dan has named three new species. He has co-authored several academic journal articles and is currently preparing “A Guide to Trees of Ranomafana National Park” for publication. His work has been recognized by colleagues who have named plants after him; he has received the William Gibson Eco-Justice lifetime achievement award in 2006 and the Chevalier de l’Ordre National de Madagascar in 2014.

Greece on the Front Line: The Refugees Keep Coming

December 3, 2019

Jane Abbott

Download Power Point Presentation Here !

Since 2015, desperate refugees mostly from the Middle East and a few from West Africa, have been flooding the Eastern Greek islands of Kos, Samos, Lesbos, Leros, and Chios. The conditions on these islands, especially on Samos, where six times the number that can be accommodated are living in squalor and dangerous conditions, are bleak.

The EU made an agreement with Turkey in March of 2016, offering to pay Turkey to keep refugees in that country. However, few refugees want or are willing to stay in Turkey. Today, refugees try leaving Turkey multiple times, sailing across a three-mile stretch in precarious dinghies, in the hope that they can reach Greece and therefore apply for asylum. A Doctors without Borders spokesperson calls Greece, particularly the Greek islands, a “dumping ground” that has created a refugee emergency. In addition, the more people who try to cross from Turkey to Greece, the more deaths there are in the process.

Jane Abbott’s talk will center on her personal experience with refugees from the Vial Camp on Chios where she spent five weeks working for the NGO CESRT (the Chios Eastern Shore Response Team) which is allied with the German NGO Open Arms. She will explain how volunteers are used there and why Chios, although crowded with refugees and constantly struggling to help them, uses CESRT as a model for how to help those in need. In the past six months, the numbers at Vial have quadrupled, so caring for refugees becomes more and more challenging.

Jane Abbott earned her bachelor’s degree at the American College in Greece (Deree College) in literature and then a master’s degree at the University of Denver in comparative literature while also earning a teacher’s certificate. After teaching at the United States International University for a year, she joined the US Peace Corps teaching in a remote village in Nepal which could only be reached by several days’ walking. The next year, Abbott taught at the University of Nepal in Kathmandu and assisted with writing the Peace Corps Nepali language manual. Abbott lived with her family in Nepal for seven years, working as a teacher and consultant for Peace Corps and USIS.

For the next two years, Abbott lived in Honiara, the Solomon Islands and consulted in Kiribati. She ran training programs in education and business and evaluated posts in the South Pacific for the Peace Corps.

Returning to the US, Abbott taught literature and integrated humanities at various community colleges in Colorado. Simultaneously, she earned her Ph.D. in community college leadership. Subsequently, she worked as a dean in a community college in Colorado with 18,000 students especially with international students.

Abbott has a particular interest in international micro credit projects for women. She was a consultant through Colorado State University for WID (Women In Development) in Nepal and studied a women’s support NGO while on a Mosal Grant. Her project for a Fulbright-Hays Group Study Abroad grant then addressed this topic in Paraguay. Two subsequent Fulbrights in Thailand and Germany supplemented this specialty.

While working at community colleges throughout her career, Abbott developed study abroad cultural programs for adults. She has taken multiple study groups to Nepal, Turkey, and especially to Greece where she has returned many times.

Abbott has worked as a volunteer on many projects. Recently this has included women from Gaza in occupied Palestine. Because of her special interest and experience in working with women in challenging situations, she chose to go to the island of Chios in the spring of 2019. Her presentation today addresses her personal experience while there and how she used her skills and experience to help men, women, and children at the camp. She is an SFWAF Board Member.

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