Second Kitchen Project / Brussels

Hola family,
As some of you maybe read in our post from yesterday, the situation in Ventimiglia is getting worse. The people there have to face police repression and we get more and more reports of police violence. New people arrive to Italy every day and make their way to Ventimiglia, to try to cross to France, UK or somewhere in Fortress Europe.

But apart from this, we heard about the miserable conditions for migrants in Brussels. We managed to send some people to see how the situation is there and to start a second kitchenproject.
The park Maximilien is since four years an unofficial place for migrants to sleep and live. In the moment around 800 people stay in this area and around 600 of them get the possibility to sleep in social centers or at private places. Round about 200 people have to sleep in the park, including pregnant woman and minors, but mostly young men. Most of these people have no chance for asylum or other help because of Dublin III, so their goal is to get to UK.
In the park are no showers or toilets and just one watertab for all the people for drinking and washing. As a consequence the hygiene conditions are very bad and health problems like tuberculosis are spreading rapidly.

A week ago we had a meeting with different NGOs and local groups who are active in Brussels, including Belgium Red Cross, Medicins Du Monde and Medicins Sans Frontiers. This was the first meeting of this kind in four years and we start to understand how the situation here can still be this bad. In the meeting we agreed that it’s important to have a better organisation between the different groups for a better use of ressources. We want to participate in creating and online timetable to have an overview on who is cooking what day. For this we have to figure out which groups want to participate and get in contact with them.
Until now a lot of different groups are distributing food, mostly cold food and nearly always there is too less, sometimes even no food at all. But there is a need for more food definetly…
The only group distributing regularly is Refugee Comunity Kitchen (RCK) who comes once a week a three hours drive from Calais to bring 850 warm meals.

Right now we are looking for a place to stay and cook to support the people in Brussels. We are in contact with people in a squat close by who have different social projects going on and if we can start there, we will start soon to renovate the kitchen.

If you want to go to Brussels to help you can send an Email to us and we direct you to Brussels or directly at Molly_on_tour@posteo.org
If you want to support us with money, you can send it to our bank account or directly to the bank account of the people in Brussels.

Name: Arne Hanno Link
IBAN: DE15 4306 0967 4131 0478 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
GLS Bank

(Keep in mind to write Brussels in the subject)

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