MAY 2026 - Monthly Report

At Wave in May 2026, we served 1,946 takeaways, welcomed 74 new arrivals, charged 159 phones and power banks, ran 129 showers, washed 90 laundry loads, and distributed 64 hygiene packages and 131 clothing items.

The total population we supported this month was 1,929.

 

May – numbers and operations

The month of May has been quieter at Wave community centre, compared to the previous months. This is reflected in the total number of people we supported – a decrease of about 25% – and a similar trend of the total number of meals served. This drop in numbers can be explained by two main factors:

– the start of seasonal jobs in hospitality and agriculture, which means that some of our community members had to relocate somewhere else in Greece for the season;
– Around mid-May some residents of the Diavata camp were transferred to other locations, among which Larissa, and it coincided to the main change in number of visitors per day at Wave;

Nonetheless, in May our community centre visitors were for the majority (around 70%) people residing in Diavata and Lagadikia camps, mainly from Sudan and South Sudan. Around 20% were Beneficiaries of International Protection (BIP) living in Thessaloniki, while around 10% were from the local Greek community. We estimate that around 10-15% of community members are people experiencing homelessness.
Towards the end of the month, we heard that new arrivals from the islands are being transferred to the camp in Diavata, so that we expect the number of visitors at Wave to grow in the upcoming days.
With the rising temperatures of May we have witnessed an increasing demand for sanitation services  like laundry and showers. Even with our washing machine spinning all day long, sometimes it’s not enough to accommodate all the requests we have, so that unfortunately we had to ask people to come back the following working day to accept their laundry. For this reason, we are considering installing a second washing machine, which would improve our capacity: not only to serve the population experiencing homelessness, but the residents of the nearby camps, who constantly report the failing services and long queues in the facilities.

 

New opening days, new ticket system, same mission and vision

A couple of updates on our operations at Wave. We have recently changed our opening days to Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, with an administration day for the whole Coordination team on Tuesdays. The decision has been taken to prioritise the team wellbeing, but also efficiency, as the Coordinators will from now have the same working days (Sunday to Thursday) and 2 consecutive days off. Before changing opening days, we consulted our community members asking them if this change would have an impact on them and received neutral answers.

We have also started a new ticket system to distribute takeaways at Wave, a decision taken to make our services fair to everyone: the high attendance of the past months has put our capacity to provide meals for everyone under more pressure. We decided to prioritise the concept of giving everyone one takeaway, with the advantage that we can better track during the day how many takeaways we are distributing and reducing the risk of not having enough food for the late comers – an event that has happened only a very few times and when they did,  we nonetheless, managed offering canned premade food or a quick ‘pasta with tomato sauce’.
Despite these changes in our operations, the mission of Wave remains the same: supporting people where no support is being given in a safe and welcoming space, which serves hot, nutritious meals alongside other services.

 

Coming soon: working groups and membership

Stay tuned as we are currently working on some tools that could make Wave more participatory for everyone who’s interested. We are drafting a plan to establish some Working Groups for current and past volunteers and supporters, who would like to get more involved in administrative or operational tasks: from fundraising to logistics, from team wellbeing to community engagement. We are very excited about this project to start, as we believe it can improve our network and connections, as well as foster ideas, suggestions and growth.