The situation

Between 2016 and 2019, tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers were stranded in camps and urban squats across Greece. The organisations providing aid with dignity were small, local, and largely invisible to the donors who wanted to help them.

The default response — ship goods from donor countries — arrives late, arrives wrong, and takes money out of the economy where the need is.

What ran

We built relationships with Greek suppliers so that individual and corporate donors could buy essential items in bulk, locally, against needs posted by the organisations themselves. The platform went live on World Refugee Day 2017 with three needs on the home page rather than the hundreds already in the system — a deliberate constraint, to point donors at what was urgent instead of overwhelming them.

What it produced

In the first ten days, on the island of Chios and at Oinofyta camp:

• 126 pairs of shoes for A Drop in the Ocean, ordered in bulk from TerraMare in Athens and delivered to Chios within 48 hours.

• 150 packs of diapers for the Do Your Part warehouse, from ToyWorld, a Greek baby-goods company, to a camp that had run out of the larger sizes.

• 145 reusable sanitary pads for The Unmentionables.

• 85 T-shirts against Refugee Support Europe's request, filled from a Greek supplier on the same 48-hour lead time.

What it shows

Buying locally meant supplies reached people faster and the money stayed in the Greek economy rather than paying for freight. That is not a nicety. It is the difference between aid that erodes a local market and aid that supports one.

This is where the needs-and-offers model was first proved. Everything since — Dorian, the Welcome Exchange, Red Recuperación, Ukraine, North Carolina — runs on what was learned here.