Vela NGO, Greece

In the tenth episode of the Daphne-CHILD Grantee Spotlight Series, Marilena Ioannidou from Vela Greece discusses their SAFE project (Support and Awareness for Future Empowerment) – creating child-friendly reporting systems for unaccompanied refugee children in Greece.

The project addresses the unique vulnerabilities refugee children face in camp settings: overcrowding, frequent movement between facilities, language barriers, and the profound challenge of building trust when both children and caregivers are constantly changing. Vela's digital reporting tool, co-created with children, offers multiple ways to report violence – through voice messages in their own language, written reports, or direct conversations with staff – recognising that refugee children come with vastly different literacy levels, linguistic backgrounds, and cultural understandings of what constitutes violence.

The project reveals that effective child protection in refugee contexts requires both flexible reporting mechanisms and rigorous internal procedures, ensuring every staff member can receive reports and respond consistently to each child individually despite working with large numbers. By piloting a system designed to be transferred to Greece's Ministry of Migration and Asylum for national implementation, Vela offers a scalable model for protecting refugee children across Europe's reception systems.

This podcast is part of a series aiming to showcase the vital and innovative work of our grantees in the Daphne-CHILD programme as they combat violence against children across Europe.