CHEERing’s National Director in Greece, Airinie Azhar, presented this week about the situation in Greek refugee camps around infant feeding, at the American Public Health Association meeting in Philadelphia, USA. APHA is one of the biggest public health organizations in the world, and their annual conference attracts thousands of attendees. To read the presentation abstract,…

Our new CHEERing Brochure provides information on what CHEERing does, how we do it, and where you can keep updated with our work!

With the recent influx of refugees to the islands and from the islands to the mainland, pregnant women and families with infants are often moved ‘en masse’ to new sites which are not always immediately equipped to help them. CHEERing’s emergency response team can conduct emergency assessments of babies’ nutritional status, and advise on supplemental…

CHEERing has been chosen to take part in the Bodossaki Foundation’s Social Dynamo program! Social Dynamo offers training, professional support and networking to NGOs and is a collaborative initiative between the Bodossaki Foundation and the City of Athens Municipality. CHEERing’s Director in Greece, Airinie Azhar, will represent our NGO at weekly sessions throughout the winter,…

Each week our sister organization in the US, CHEER, nominates a breastfeeding CHAMPion of the week. This week’s ChAMPion is a special young woman living in Greece. “Elise” (name changed to protect confidentiality) is a refugee living in an Athens shelter, with her husband and baby. The family sought refuge here from the ongoing war…

Today, September 23rd, CHEERing held an infant massage session for mothers and babies living at the Eleonas camp. Shaista Karimi, our interpreter, breastfeeding counselor, and certified physiotherapist, led the session. It is hard to describe how moving it is, when calm descends on a room full of concerned mothers and crying infants when Shaista begins…

September 2019: Thanks to funding from WABA (the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action), CHEERing held the first 2 of 4 training and support sessions for fathers this month, around breastfeeding and reproductive health. Dr Tomas Andriotti (2nd from left), a Brazilian obstetrician visiting with CHEERing from Harvard University in the USA, taught the sessions at…

Shaista Karimi, CHEERing’s wonderful Farsi translator, is now officially our breastfeeding counselor as well! Shaista completed the Lactation Education Resources 20 hours online course which gives her an in-depth knowledge of lactation and breastfeeding’s contextual setting. We are grateful to Shaista for all her help, and to Help Refugees who helped fund CHEERing to train…

Last month, our team ran a first aid training session for mothers, fathers, and shelter staff at Elna Maternity Center. Our volunteer, Becca, used her background as a medical student to cover topics such as burns, fainting, choking, panic attacks, bleeding, and CPR (pictured!), with help from Shaista, who has extensive experience as a nurse…

We at CHEERing have updated our vaccine checker tool, to help our team and the aid field at large, to assess infant vaccination status among refugees in Greece. The Greek vaccination schedule was adjusted in the summer of 2019, and our new chart reflects that update. We have also added a visual aid showing where…