Charity turns old blankets into winter coats for refugees

THESSALONIKI, Greece -- It's been a miserable winter in Greece, especially for the many thousands of refugees staying in tents in old factories and warehouses.

At a tiny workshop in the northern city of Thessaloniki, they're trying to make a bit of a difference.

Volunteers are working long hours to try to keep the refugees warm, with bursts of noise from sewing machines revealing their mission: To turn discarded blankets into jackets, overcoats and other winter wearables.

There's an almost endless supply: The blankets -- mostly army issue, gray with red stitching -- came from the refugee and migrant encampment at Idomeni on the Macedonian border that now is closed.

As many as 14,000 people lived in tents at the site last year after European countries closed borders to refugees streaming into the continent. Greek police cleared the camp in May, leaving hundreds of tents and thousands of blankets behind.

A refugee woman cries as she and her children are covered with a blanket near the northern Greek village of Idomeni.Giannis Papanikos ~ Associated Press

A Greek-German charity called Naomi collected them by the vanload to be washed and reused.

Project organizer Elke Wollschlaeger helps make and model the coats, which have the label "Remember Idomeni" stitched inside.

"We're trying to keep it in people's minds what happened in Idomeni last year and what Europe did to refugees and the Greek people, just leaving the borders closed and thousands of people stranded," she said.

Greece's government said more than 60,000 refugees and migrants remain stuck in the country after the border closures. It has struggled to shelter camp dwellers from freezing overnight temperatures. Authorities on the island of Lesbos are investigating three recent deaths at a camp there, possibly caused by fumes from makeshift heaters.

For Syrian refugee Hasan Al Kodsy, helping at the coat workshop in Thessaloniki was a natural fit. The 30-year-old used to run a family textile business in Damascus that employed about 100. His journey to Europe stopped at Idomeni, but he's hoping to join his wife and 2-year-old daughter in Munich, Germany, through the European Union's relocation scheme.

"I saw women (in Idomeni) shivering in blankets, and that was not a nice thing to see," he said. "So we started making clothes with the blankets."

The charity doesn't distribute the jackets directly but passes them on to other aid groups in return for donations, using any money raised for skills-training programs for refugees and projects to take them out of camps and place them in apartments. It also sells the coats to walk-ins, like resident Katerina Tsolakidou.

"We really liked the idea of re-using the blankets from Idomeni," she said after picking up a coat. "It gives the refugees something to do. So instead of spending the money somewhere else, it'll be put to good use here."