Our Mission

Collective Aid is run by a flexible core team of long-term coordinators and managers, supported by a dynamic and ever-changing group of short-term and mid-term volunteers from all around the globe.

All of us are committed to bringing support and dignity to refugees and other displaced people across Europe through our services.

Our lasting mission is to observe and act, to always be ready to fill the gaps left by other aid actors, and to collaborate with anyone who shares our aim of making life better for people living on the move across Europe, always in solidarity and respect.

Background

Collective Aid was established in early 2017. Originally under the name BelgrAid, it was founded in response to the changing needs of refugees and migrants in Serbia.

As part of the Balkan Route (opening in 2012 after the EU eased visa conditions towards Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Montenegro), Serbia experienced hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants crossing through the country each year. However, with the fortification of the Hungarian border in 2015 and a general rise of tension related to the unfolding crisis, circumstances changed. In March 2016, the borders of Slovenia, Macedonia, and Croatia closed, marking the official end of the Balkan route and therefore causing thousands of people to become stuck in other countries.

While hoping for the reopening of the borders, refugees and migrants sought shelter in squats and abandoned buildings throughout the country. It was during this time that Collective Aid was formed in order to channel the independent efforts attempting to help residents of the Belgrade Barracks. Handing out both food and non-food items such as blankets and clothing, the goal was to cater to the most basic needs of people living on the streets. Our efforts quickly amounted to the distribution of 2000 meals per day and established the organisation as one of the key actors in local efforts to bring relief to displaced people stuck in Serbia. As the country’s response to the crisis became more structured, so did the assistance refugees and migrants were able to receive. After the establishment of formal settlements and camps, Collective Aid partnered with Oxfam Italia to continue cooking for the Obrenovac Transit Center. Between June 2017 and September 2018, we provided daily lunches for around 500-900 center residents.

Using the knowledge we have gained in Serbia, Collective Aid has therefore expanded its efforts to Bosnia and Herzegovina and France.

With refugees and migrants trying to progress along the “New Balkan Route,” the country has seen an increasing influx of people trying to enter and make their way over the Croatian border to the North. Similar to our original response in Belgrade, we have been supporting refugees and migrants living on the streets since the summer of 2018. In October 2018, Usivak Camp opened near Sarajevo. We were invited to work there for a short-term contract. From our previous experience, we knew how to design, set up, and staff a camp kitchen. From October 2018 until April 2019, we distributed three meals per day for 700 to 800 refugees, totaling over 260,000 meals by the time we handed the project over to a team of locals. At the same time, we helped Basis and IOM open a free shop in the camp, where residents could choose the clothing they wanted to wear.

After the end of our interventions in the camp and hanging over our operations, we decided to focus on the people who were in transit in Sarajevo, living in squats and without access to basic services. Thus, we started our mobile non-food item (NFI) project (distributing clothes, shoes, hygiene packs, and blankets, amongst other essential items) as well as our glasses project in collaboration with DRC and a local optician.

In Serbia, after having served over 325,000 meals, our kitchen project came to an end in October 2018.  With all the necessary structures in place, Collective Aid handed this responsibility over to a local catering company.  That said, our work in Serbia is far from finished!

As crossing borders has become more difficult, we are focused on promoting better mental health and well-being through Azadi Community Center in Obrenovac.   Expanding on our past involvement in running games and activities every day after serving lunch in camp, we are now able to offer language classes and a range of workshops in a peaceful and positive space. This allowed us not just to provide some sense of distraction but also to enable personal growth and progress. The project ended due to the first Covid-19 lockdown in mid-20202.

Seeing how difficult it would be to host sessions for groups, we opened the WASH Center in the Belgrade Old Town, our current operation there. The Belgrade WASH Center offers free hot showers and free laundry services to people on the move and the local homeless community.

In addition to our WASH Center in Belgrade, we also run a mobile distribution service in Subotica, at the northern Serbian border with Hungary. The Subotica project delivers a mobile distribution service with tents, tarps, and sleeping bags for those sleeping rough near the border area. We also distribute warm clothing, hygiene packs, and hypothermia kits, as well as firewood in the winter to allow people to keep warm. We distribute a variety of different food packs that often include bread, eggs, potatoes, onions, dates, or seasonal foods. Our mobile distribution service is also fitted with an IBC tank which allows people to take showers and access drinkable water at our distributions. Around 500 people weekly access our mobile distribution of clean drinkable water and warm water for showers.

These services are essential in the area near the northern Serbian border as the camps are often over-capacity and in poor conditions, and many people opt to sleep rough and therefore compromise their access to shelter, food, and appropriate sanitation.

In August 2019, we sent a team to Northern France to take over the largest material aid operation in the region from Choose Love and L’Auberge des Migrants, supporting a population that currently stands at around 1,500 people with essential and life-saving aid. This project is at its peak capacity nowadays.

We also partner with Border Violence and Monitoring Network (BVMN). At all of our project sites, our volunteers are formally trained to report on border violence that they observe or that our beneficiaries consensually testify to. This partnership with BVMN allows us to actively engage in advocating against the normalization of the violent culture of anti-migration policies at both a domestic and border level. It is important to use our resources to advocate against the human rights abuses and undignifying conditions that the fortification of borders is creating in order to bring an end to it and a systemic change to allow safe and dignified passages for people seeking safety.

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