Lagadikia, 17 June 2016 – Wafaa, a 33-year-old fashion designer and her three children, aged 3 to 15, fled their hometown of Aleppo, Syria, in February 2016. Wafaa had hoped to join her husband in Germany, who had left their war-torn home almost one year before. But, her family’s flight from war came to a halt, after countries along the Balkans route tightened their borders in March. The family spent six weeks sleeping in a small tent pitched in a petrol station near the Greek border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. They hoped to be allowed northwards. Wafaa was desperate to find somewhere secure for her children. Then, they moved to to the Lagadikia site near Thessaloniki in northern Greece.

Lagadikia, 8 May 2016 – The open accommodation site in Lagadikia is set up one kilometer south of a village with the same name in northern Greece. The Greek authorities with the support of the UNHCR manage and operate the site. Like thousands of other women who were forced to make the dangerous journey into Europe on their own, Nisrine Shiko, a 34-year-old Syrian refugee, travelled there with her five children, after her husband was killed by a bomb in Aleppo three years ago.