Colorado man volunteers at refugee camp after hearing Coloradoan story
Harrison Feind didn't think of himself as a humanitarian worker or activist.
And then he turned on the local public radio radio station in mid-December.
Feind, 26, listened to a story on Colorado Matters last month about a pair of Poudre Fire Authority firefighters who spent two weeks rescuing refugees from the Mediterranean Sea — an experience documented first-hand by this Fort Collins Coloradoan journalist.
Inspired by the volunteer work, captivated by the tragedy and frustrated about what he deemed a lack of comprehensive coverage in U.S. media, Feind wanted to do something.
So he went to Google.
“I'll admit, I have not done a whole lot of volunteering in the past," Feind told the Coloradoan. "I’m not really proud of that. But after hearing about your story, I just decided to go. I was beyond nervous just because I had no expectations. I had no idea what I was going to get myself in to."
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By the end of the month, he was on a plane bound for Europe.
During the first two weeks of January, Feind volunteered at Nea Kavala Refugee Camp in Northern Greece with A Drop in the Ocean, a nonprofit that provides direct aid to refugees. He was assigned to distribute clothing and food staples — salt, oil and a handful of vegetables — to the approximately 650 people living in crammed containers lining the camp that sits on an old airfield.
Winds howled and temperatures plunged at the camp near the Macedonian border. Bitter cold froze water lines transformed human waste in the portable toilets into a nauseating block of ice, Feind said.
"It was bleak," he said. "It was miserable. There’s not really an adjective to really describe how horrible the conditions were.”
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But there was a bright spot — the people.
Feind has fond memories of refugees, predominantly Syrians fleeing places like Aleppo and Damascus. Though they had almost no possessions and the conditions were a just a step up from squalor, many welcomed him into their pods and offered their scant food supplies in exchange for his conversation.
"They were very welcoming," he said.
Feind went to high school in Boulder before moving to Washington, D.C., for college. He returned to Colorado in July and continues to work as an accountant. He arrived in Greece on Dec. 31, left on Jan. 14 for home, and was interviewed Monday on Colorado Public Radio's Colorado Matters program.
People have already extended offers to sponsor his next trip, he said.
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That interview came as conversation about refugees hit a boiling point. The weekend was marked by protest and confusion, locally and nationally, about President Donald Trump's executive order Friday that suspended admittance of Syrian refugees indefinitely and significantly scaled back the refugee admittance program.
Trump justified the measure by saying it was necessary to more exhaustively screen refugees from certain countries seeking resettlement in the U.S., despite already lengthy and existing vetting processes.
Feind criticized some coverage — and the lack thereof — about the issues affecting Syria and neighboring countries. Too often, he said, that conversation is "drowned in political nonsense and bigotry."
Now that he's back in Colorado, Feind is determined to spread the word about his experience.
He's already working on plans to return, possibly for even longer than just two weeks.
Follow reporter Jason Pohl on Twitter: @pohl_jason.