Makerspace Lesvos

We are a small multicutural and multinational people who like to create.

We repair, build and maintain for the community with the community. 

Makerspace Lesvos aims to better the quality of life of refugees living on Lesvos by facilitating technical solutions to commonly faced problems. 

Makerspace Lesvos helps with the repair and replacement of phones, bikes, clothes, and other technologies at our workshop, which is located a fifteen-minute walk from the Kara Tepe refugee camp.  We also run workshops teaching how to repair these items.

Self-empowerment and education are central to the organization’s mission. Many of the volunteers in the organisation are part of the refugee community itself, living inside the camp, and the organisation supports them in turn by funding legal support to assist with their asylum applications. Additionally, we have recently introduced two paid permanent positions that will be adopted by two long-standing volunteers, who have now gained asylum status and have settled on Lesvos. They offer a vital perspective and can drive long term continuity in the project.

Displaced people living on Lesvos as refugees have to navigate complex legal hoops, and sometimes the wait for asylum status can take years. The harsh conditions they face in the meantime involves limited movement beyond the Kara Tepe camp, which was originally set up as a temporary space composed of make-shift tents, but has become the only camp on the island after the destruction of Moria in 2020. The lack of free-mobility has been exacerbated further by the introduction of stricter rules cued by the pandemic.

You can find us on the grounds of  One Happy Family community center, where our workshop is located https://www.facebook.com/OHFLesvos