PARIS (AP) – A 24-year-old Danish woman sails refugees across windy straits to safety in Sweden. A Romanian, whose forebears were driven from their homeland, opens his house to today’s migrants. A girl brings pens and paper to migrant children sleeping at a Milan train station.
While European governments string barbed wire across borders and assail each other over asylum rules, ordinary citizens are taking action to cope with an unprecedented inflow of migrants, their generosity offering moments of hope for the newcomers – and for Europe itself.
“Europe is the baker in Kos who gives away his bread to hungry and weary souls. Europe is the students in Munich and in Passau who bring clothes for the new arrivals at the train station. Europe is the policeman in Austria who welcomes exhausted refugees upon crossing the border,” EU President Jean-Claude Juncker said earlier this month. “This is the Europe I want to live in.”
Long-established aid groups and freshly created online forums are working collectively and tirelessly to help where governments can’t, or won’t. But individual acts of kindness are what many migrants will remember, whether they build new lives in Europe or eventually make it back to Syria, Sudan or wherever they call home.
These are but a few among the many, many people who have stepped out of their daily lives to contribute.