Non-Food Items (NFIs) are essential relief items such as hygiene products, clothes, blankets and basic household goods.

Consider all the items you use in your morning routine: sleeping on a comfortable mattress with a pillow and blanket, changing clothes, washing up, brushing your teeth, and putting on shoes and a jacket before heading out for the day…

While these essentials may seem small, lacking access to them can make it incredibly difficult to live with dignity. On the Greek Islands many refugees arrive in wet clothes, many lost all their belongings on their journey. Barely anyone has more than two sets of clothes and often people arrive without shoes. Furthermore, when residents stay for more months in the camps they do not have adequate clothing for the changing seasons. Access to these vital resources can take days or even weeks, as they are often expensive and hard to obtain.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care’.

At Eurorelief, we work to improve this ‘standard of living adequate’ that is lacking in the refugee camps we are present in, by handing out clothes and hygiene products. Providing NFIs is a central part of Eurorelief’s identity. Every day we see dignity restored through physical needs being addressed.

For every new arrival, we aim to provide a basic set of clothing, including underwear, socks, pants, short-sleeve and long-sleeve shirts. We also work to provide a starter set of hygiene items: toothbrush, toothpaste, shower gel and shampoo. These are the minimum of items we want to hand out to cover basic needs. We also work closely with our partners to provide shoes, extra winter items, toys for children, towels and more—items that most of us consider daily essentials.

When Moria Camp on Lesvos was operating, Eurorelief distributed different aid products with the help of partner organisations. After the move to the new camp in 2020, Eurorelief set up a New Arrivals Area where every new arrival receives their basic set of clothing as soon as possible after arrival. Today Eurorelief also operates a Free Clothing Shop and a Free Hygiene Shop, both offering a monthly supply of different items. On Samos our New Arrivals Clothing Shop began operating in early 2024. Since it opened we have served 17,982 individuals, while we served 16,204 new arrivals on Lesvos during the same period. We have also distributed NFIs to residents in Malakasa and on Chios and hope to continue to fill in any gaps as we become more established on those sites.

There is a critical need for providing diapers and hygiene pads on a monthly basis, as many women have no alternative providers. On Lesvos we use our hygiene shop to hand these out, while on Samos we forward the donated products to camp management for distribution. Since January 2024 we have handed out approximately half a million diapers across both islands and around 14,000 hygiene pads.

In our warehouses we receive and sort the shipped pallets, integrating them into Boxtribute, a digital system that supports humanitarian aid organisations managing their inventory. We are grateful for this support, which allows us to maintain an overview of our stock and to communicate to our NFI team in camp which items are available.

Eurorelief value: ‘We choose partnership and collaboration to leverage unique strengths to serve people better.’

We could not hand out anything if not for our great partners that supply us with all the donated goods. There are monthly pallets arriving from our partner CRR in Athens full of clothes, hygiene items and other essentials. There are several trucks per year driving from our partner GAiN in the Netherlands to the islands and to Athens to send us blankets, wheelchairs, hygiene items, shoes and many other items. There are other organisations and private donors that contribute to Eurorelief, with some based abroad and others being NGOs that also serve refugees alongside us, allowing us to share resources.

There is a German initiative self-making clothing items for us to distribute. There is a French NGO on Samos that heard about a shortage of shoes and donated 600 pairs of shoes. There are Greek locals that regularly leave donations at our warehouses and there are the camp residents themselves who donate some of their belongings before they leave the camp, passing along items that may be useful to someone else.

We want to thank our partners for the continuous support and all the shipments we receive. We look forward to future cooperations!

If you would like to support our NFI distributions, consider donating to Eurorelief NFIs & Warehouse to support our warehouse and transportation costs, as well as to our partner organisations. GAiN (globally) and CRR (Netherlands) also collect clothing—your donations can significantly benefit Eurorelief’s mission.

We, the NFI team of Eurorelief, work daily on acquiring, transporting, receiving, sorting, forwarding and distributing all our NFIs and try to find the best ways to support the people in the camps.