Sonia Andreu Barradas and Tereza Lyssiotis
From the beginning, it was touching and motivating to see how many competent women spontaneously offered us their support, their know-how, and their network. Two of them are now part of the team and lead our projects in Greece. They are reliable, intelligent, communicative, resilient, and extremely creative when it comes to solving problems: the women, in action for "SAO - Women for Women on the Run."
Tereza Lyssiotis is SAO Field Director Greece (on the right in the picture) and is mainly responsible for the projects "Bashira" on Lesvos and "Amina" in Athens. She is a communications and crisis management consultant. In 1990, she worked as a journalist in Cyprus, moving to Greece ten years later, where she worked in the banking and finance sector. Since 2009 she has worked as a project manager for corporate programmes and campaigns. In December 2015, she started volunteering in Athens. She soon decided that she wanted to continue working entirely for people affected by armed conflict and part of a humanitarian crisis that has created moral and political challenges for the whole of Europe. She did her MSc in European Studies at the LSE and her BA in Political Science at Brandeis University, Massachusetts.
Sonia Andreu Barradas (left), our project manager of the "Bashira Community and Empowerment Centre" on Lesvos. She comes from Spain and introduces herself as follows: "Listening, learning, and responding - over the last few years, I have been able to strengthen my role as a positive thinker and team leader in various positions. Constructive thinking and close listening have allowed me, on many occasions, to turn open questions into opportunities. I am always open to new ideas and environments and happy to move outside my comfort zones. At the Bashira Centre, I am very excited to put these qualities at the service of women whose daily lives are marked by hopelessness and the dreary existence in the refugee camp."
We thank everyone who supports SAO - with donations, supplies, labour, expertise, and contacts. It needs us. It needs SAO. It needs you!