A Drop in the Ocean has a lot of dedicated volunteers. Some travel once, others travel several times to Greece to help displaced people. Some stay ten days, others stay much longer. But one man has stayed with us longer than anyone else!
George Creighton started volunteering with A Drop in the Ocean on Lesvos, just before the end of our operations there in March 2016. After Lesvos, he moved to Northern Greece and worked in Idomeni, Cherso and Nea Kavala. After a few weeks, he became a coordinator. With his great logistic skills, he was the natural choice for the role as a warehouse coordinator when we opened our large warehouse in Athens. George was also an important contributor to the opening of the market in Skaramangas last week.
After more than 15 months, George is now moving on to other challenges. Together with his Norwegian girlfriend, Stine, another long-term volunteer. Their first stop will be Bergen in Norway. George takes with him a lifetime of experience, good memories, heartbreaking stories and hundreds of new friends from many different nationalities.
George is not the kind of man who would show the whole world on social media what a great humanitarian he is. He prefers to work in the background. For hours and hours, in freezing cold weather and in burning sunshine.
This is what our Head of Operations, William Heaney, says about George:
“I don’t know what we’ll do without you George. Honestly. The calmness about everything you do, and especially your incredibly reassuring ability to transfer that calm to others (me). In this environment, with all of us out of our comfort zones to a lesser or greater extent, I can’t tell you how precious that is, and how I will miss it. Thank you for everything you’ve done, for us, but mostly for the thousands of displaced people who have benefited from your quiet, profound, efforts here, to make their days and journeys a little less arduous. It’s a hell of a shift you’ve put in here, I wish you all the best in everything”.
Ahmed, a former resident of Nea Kavala, says the following:
T”here is a lot to say about George. I really wish that I was a poet, because I would have made amazing poetry about him. That man was special. He was honest, nice, smart and most of all brave. He was so practical, and never rested till he finished his tasks”.
We are so grateful for the time he has spent with A Drop in the Ocean. Having dedicated and skilled people like George on our team make the organisation move forward.
We wish you the best of luck, George, and hope to see you around!
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