Tag: Campaigns

Despite the efforts of organized civil society, more than 28,000 lives have sunk into the largest liquid cemetery on the planet due to the deliberate inaction of the governments and institutions of #FortressEurope. How many more lives could have been saved with the involvement of the states?

In these years, only the solidarity and mobilization of citizens have demonstrated once again that the values of humanity, empathy and respect for human life are not a dead letter, but rather the fundamental pillars on which peaceful and democratic coexistence is based, and on which the #EU was once based.

Today we also celebrate all the people who, like you, have helped us get here. And we will continue with the commitment to save lives at sea and on land and to defend the rights of people in vulnerable situations, until legal and safe routes are guaranteed for all!

JOIN OUR CAUSE. THEY NEED YOU

Photography: Fernando del Berro

Fans who purchase or have already purchased the official Girona FC shirt for this season will be able to have the Open Arms logo printed on the sleeve for five euros, and the proceeds from this will go entirely towards our missions.

The agreement with Girona FC goes beyond the football field. In the coming months, Open Arms will promote its educational project “Education for Freedom” — which aims to promote values such as justice, empathy, respect and dignity, as well as respect for people regardless of their beliefs, origins and opinions — alongside the nutrition talks that the club regularly holds in schools in the province of Girona. The Girona students will join the more than 125,000 students from 2,500 schools from around the world who have participated in the project since 2015. 

The agreement was signed by the founder and director of Open Arms, Oscar Camps, and the president of Girona FC, Delfí Geli, during a visit that took place a few days ago on the Open Arms Uno ship, with the participation of the first team coach, Míchel Sánchez.

Delfí Geli explained: “We are proud of this collaboration agreement with Open Arms because of the great humanitarian work they do everywhere, and from Girona we want to help them with whatever is needed, offering them the visibility that a football club like us can give them”.

Oscar Camps pointed out: “That a club as important as Girona, and also in the first division, looks at us and gives us one of its sleeves to put our emblem on is very significant. Nowadays, football has a lot of fans and it’s a very useful way to spread our message. At Open Arms, we will try to rise to the challenge and we hope to be able to do a lot of things, especially with children, which is our main goal.”

Watch the video of the collaboration:

“I deeply admire the work that Open Arms do and I always have that in the back of my mind,” the comedian said during the launch. “We have made the most of the enormous communicative power of t-shirts and the simple image of a heart (which is so heavy it’s almost tipping the boat over!) to try and make sure that the organisation is at the centre of the conversation in a good way.”

“When I see someone with an Open Arms t-shirt,” Buenafuente concluded, “I always think: that’s one of mine!”

The press launch was an opportunity to discuss the migratory state of emergency ordered by the Italian government just a few days prior. “The recent far-right governments in Italy have dismantled the system for asylum seekers,” Oscar Camps said. “We know that these policies are going to have consequences, but we don’t know their scope, or what regulations will be affected.”

The t-shirt is already on sale on our online shop Openarms.es, on Samanteofficial.com and in-store and online in Natura shops. The money raised from the sales of this 100% cotton garment will all go towards the work Open Arms does on land and at sea. When people are in danger, humanity must prevail and we must protect the lives of those who are vulnerable, it’s in our nature.

We need each other. We need you.
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In our talks, we worked on empathy, respect, protection of the weakest, recognition of dignity and human rights. And we talked with the teachers of the 14 schools that visited us (9 from Mallorca, 3 from Ibiza and 2 from Menorca) in order to incorporate our EPL methodology in the classroom.

On March 22nd, the President of the Government of the Balearic Islands, Francina Armengol, and the Councillor for Social Affairs and Sports, Fina Santiago, visited us in Mallorca, emphasizing the importance of this meeting to bring the phenomenon of migration and human rights in the Mediterranean to the attention of the general public and especially to schools.

We also held several open days for citizens to raise awareness about migration and human rights in the Mediterranean, as well as storytelling sessions where books from our collection “Drifting tales” were read.

The experience of these 17 days in the Balearic Islands was very intense, but also very consoling and hopeful, and we confirmed once again that education is a fundamental pillar for building a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.

After a few days in port to prepare for its next mission, Astral will soon return to the central Mediterranean for a mission of observation, surveillance and denunciation in this sea that has become the largest mass grave on the planet, with at least 576 people drowned so far this year.

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The magazine explains the reasons behind migrations, appeals to historical memory and encourages empathy. This Namaka also deals with the drama of all those people who throw themselves into the Mediterranean Sea and risk their LIFES. And it makes us think about how we welcome newcomers and invites us to put ourselves in the shoes of the migrants. The magazine talks about inequalities and how they condition the existence of so many people in the world. But above all, the magazine wants to be a hymn of hope and activism, celebrating the actions of all those who, with arms wide open, help and denounce injustice. Namaka number 35 raises questions that are sometimes difficult to answer, but that we as a society must ask ourselves.

Namaka has walked hand in hand with Open Arms and especially with its pedagogical coordinator, Ángeles Schjaer, who makes this reflection: “As long as we continue to build walls and protect borders instead of protecting people, we will continue to live in an unequal world. Let us build more bridges and less walls! With this project we want to create a fairer and kinder world for all people, no matter where they come from. With “Education for Freedom” we open our arms, but also our hearts and minds to be responsible and honest. We must recover our historical memory and remember that we are a country where, a few years ago, many people emigrated, fleeing a war, and we were lucky to be welcomed on the other side of the sea and to have the opportunity to start again.

“This magazine is a gift to all those families and schools that strive to provide children with resources that address serious issues such as these. At Namaka, we believe that awareness and information from an early age are essential for our children to develop the ability to make decisions and take action. That is why we always offer proposals that encourage entrepreneurship and activism, with the aim of making them reflect and seek solutions to current challenges,” adds Sara Molina, editor of the publication.

On February 15, Sara Molina, editor of Namaka magazine, and Ángeles Schjaer, educational coordinator of Open Arms, presented this special issue in a live video on Namaka’s IG channel.

In addition, Ángeles Schjaer spoke with Sara Molina in the Fora tabús! podcast for teachers, in which the editor of Namaka magazine talks about controversial issues that should be addressed in the classroom. In this episode, Schjaer presented the “Education for Freedom” project that Open Arms carries out in schools and institutes, focusing on different age groups, to raise awareness about migration, empathy and human rights.

To respond to this humanitarian emergency, medical and health assistance is essential to care for the thousands of people injured by the earthquake. The medical management of the three hospitals (Aqrabat Hospital, Atmeh Charity Hospital and Al Shifaa Hospital), which are currently working under very complicated conditions, have sent us a list of urgent medical needs. Therefore, in alliance with SAR Navarra, which collaborates and participates in this mission, we have started an active fundraising campaign to collect funds that will go entirely to these health centers, including medical equipment, consumables and orthopedic material. 

Once we have the medical supplies, we will send them by air via Turkey with our partner Solidaire, an organization that will bring all the cargo to Adana Airport (Turkey) with their Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  From there, our Syrian partner will distribute the supplies to the hospitals where they are needed.

Your support is critical to saving lives in this humanitarian emergency.

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With Humans being humans we aim to connect with the innate essence of people. We appeal to empathy, affection, and the need to defend lives in danger.

Thanks to the humanity of people like you, we have been able to save lives and preserve the dignity of more than 66,000 people in the last seven years. We have achieved this through rescue missions at sea and interventions in nursing homes and vulnerable groups in times of health emergencies in pandemics. Also thanks to our #Origen project in Senegal, and the creation of humanitarian air corridors, in flights that prove that legal and safe ways for refugees are possible.

We need each other. They need you.

The first audiovisual piece of Humans being Humans, a campaign developed by a great team of professionals from the audiovisual sector, stars American actor and activist Richard Gere. It also features other personalities from the world of culture and sports such as Pep Guardiola, Joan Manuel Serrat, Marc Gasol, Rigoberta Bandini, and others to be added in the coming days. They show their most human side to demonstrate that all people, regardless of their origin, sex, religion, or skin color, have something precious in common: life, emotions, projects, and above all, human rights.

As Richard Gere himself says: “Let’s take care of each other, please, let’s take care of each other“.

Because, when other people are in danger, that is when we most need to return to our essence: humans being humans. And more than ever, we need your support to keep going.

It’s in our nature, it’s in you. Let’s keep doing it.

We need each other. They need you.
Help us to keep going.
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Cruelty kills, but social passivity is also as deadly. Since 2014, at least 24,305 people have died and disappeared in the Mediterranean trying to reach the European continent, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). But the number is much higher since, according to the same source, the bodies of at least two thirds of the people who disappear at sea cannot be recovered.

Continuing with our commitment to the protection of life and the rights of all people who are in a vulnerable situation, we launched this action to raise public awareness about how the same sea that gives us moments of vacation enjoyment has become the deadliest on the planet.

The campaign consists of posting on beaches, several pairs of posters: one that contains a tragic number paired with a second that, resorting to irony, denounces the collective passivity in the face of that fact. Each of the 2 posters refer to 2 different web domains (available in Spanish, Catalan and Italian) that receive the viewer with one message or another depending on the URL entered.

nomiresparaotrolado.com / miraparaotrolado.com

nomiriscapaunaaltrabanda.cat / miracapaunaaltrabanda.cat

nonguardaredallaltraparte.com / guardadaunaltraparte.com

This audiovisual piece was produced from a mix of graphic and animation techniques, made with photographs and videos from the photojournalists that collaborate with Open Arms during our rescue missions.

Graphic and audiovisual material:
Santi Palacios, Bruno Thevenin, Carlos Gil Andreu, Jesús Hellín, Jairo Vargas, Jean Marc Joseph, Pablo Tosco, Vice, Producciones del Barrio.