Cristian Sánchez: Remember when we were children?
We had fun playing simple games
like hide-and-seek and tag.
Everything was so simple, right?
Our only concern
was to keep ourselves entertained, to keep ourselves busy.
And if there was nothing to do, it didn't matter
because with just a piece of paper and a pencil,
thanks to our boundless imagination,
we were capable of turning ourselves into a sidekick of our favourite superhero
or even better, into the hero himself.
But of course, not every child in the world
has these opportunities.
Where we see shooting stars,
they pray to be one of them.
In this case, we are referring to the Middle East,
where these children have to live in a war alien to them.
If they are lucky and their family has the necessary resources,
they can leave the country.
But what if their family doesn't have the means to do that?
They only have two options.
The first one is to wait for the war to end,
if they survive it.
The second option they have is for a terrorist group to kidnap them,
indoctrinate them, train them,
and send them to the front at the age of 15.
Andrea Rueda: But when they finally make it to Europe,
their situation is not exactly filled with hope.
They find out that for the foreseeable future,
they are stuck in a fenced camp away from the city,
with no possibility of either leisure or work,
and where their basic needs are miraculously covered.
We visited the camps in and around Athens in order to assess their situation.
We have met a lot of children living in these bleak conditions.
And we want to show you some of the cases we consider most significant.
The first one is Firas, this child.
Firas left Syria at the age of nine.
He and his family threw themselves into the sea.
He travelled by sea via Turkey and Macedonia
over a period of three years, until the age of 12
when he got to settle in Athens.
But Firas doesn't know how to write,
because he spent the fundamental years of his education
moving from one place to another.
Firas wants to make friends
because he hasn't had a group of friends either,
for the same reason.
When we arrived,
the first thing Firas did was to approach us and say,
'Come play with me. I want friends.'
And he immediately took us towards the other kids
who were also there, in the Port of Piraeus.
This helped us a lot in approaching the others
and creating an emotional bond with them.
Firas was always eager to learn.
He always wanted to play board games and wanted to learn how to play cards.
He was such a charming child.
We enjoyed spending time with his family.
He always offered us coffee, tea, dinner at his place.
All because he loved to have friends and to gather them with his family,
that was his most important bond and actually the only one he had there.
Another very special case was Neka, this little girl.
Neka is Afghan, she is nine years old,
and the most precocious girl in the world.
Neka loved to make necklaces and bracelets and to give them away
so everyone could look as lovely as she did.
Neka had two important wishes:
one was to go to Germany, just like everyone there,
and the other one was to sleep in a hotel
because for months, she was sleeping in a camping tent at the port
along with her family.
The last time I saw Neka
was the day I got to the port, and her dad said to me,
'We got our passports back; we are being deported.
We didn't get asylum, so we need to return to Afghanistan.'
Devastated, I approached Neka, hugged her,
and she said to me happily, 'Will you visit me when I get to Germany?'
I felt incredibly sad.
Neka had a younger sister too.
She was two years old,
so she had been born during their journey from one place to another,
and she's one of the few girls that I've ever seen
who never laughs or plays.
She was always sick.
She always had a fever, she was always crying -
a two-year-old girl.
Cristian Sánchez: The children were not just looking for us during game time,
but also when we were performing our duties,
such as food distribution, cleaning work,
or like in this case, when we were building a vegetable garden.
They used to run like crazy asking if they could do something to help
because they saw us in the camp,
helping them tirelessly day and night,
so they felt the need to help us
so they could feel useful by helping us in our work in return.
Because, imagine what it must be like to live for months in a fenced field,
completely isolated, and having nothing to do.
Naturally, they can go out.
If they're lucky, the nearest town is 31 miles away.
But playing was not everything
and helping us in our work was not everything either.
There were children whose father, for one reason or another,
was not there with them.
Those children had to help their mother and siblings
in the daily housework:
chores like queuing up at food distribution points,
queuing up to do the laundry,
being at the nappy and baby food distributions,
milk distribution when there was milk.
And yet, there is something worse:
the cases where they don't have a mother, a father, or siblings,
so they have no family to take care of them and protect them.
There is the case of Abdul Haid.
Unfortunately, we don't have an actual photo of him,
but we think this photo is very representative.
Abdul Haid is a 16-year-old boy
who spent most of his time alone in his tent,
either listening to music
or when he had the chance, talking with his family on the phone.
The few moments he got out of his tent to meet us,
he greeted us with a hug every single time.
He was obviously affectionate and needed to receive it also.
While he was talking to us, he never let go of our hands.
And I believe that he looked upon us, not quite as a father figure,
because he already had a father,
but he saw us as his protectors.
All this is the reason why we are here today.
Because when someone has been out there and back,
their reality, the way they face problems, the way they see life in general
change completely.
We left friends there.
We have left behind people who shared moments with us,
both good and bad.
And you can't relax when you return from there,
because you feel the need to be with them
even though, sadly, we don't have the resources or the capacity
to resolve their problems,
but we can stand by them, helping them through these difficult times.
For all these reasons, we came up with this initiative.
It consists of giving a toy
to every defenceless child out there in the toughest refugee camps.
Andrea Rueda: We are talking about 'Let's Be Game Changers',
developed in Athens.
One day, Cristian said, 'I want to return here on Christmas Day
so we can give them toys and make them happy for once.'
And I said, 'I'll help you.'
With the help of others, we started a project to make this happen.
We organise cultural events with elements from the local culture,
from the different cities in which we work.
We are doing concerts, improvisation theatre plays,
poetry readings.
The money we collect will be taken there and used to buy toys
to help restore hope for these children.
They can have the joy of receiving a gift, something that belongs to them,
for them to play with by themselves or to share with other children
so that they can get back some of the childhood they have lost.
You may wonder why we don't collect toys instead of money.
And the answer is very simple.
If we collect all the toys and have to transport them
all the way out there,
we will end up spending a lot of money on freight
because it's so expensive.
It's much easier to take the money there and spend it there, making a big saving.
We must also keep in mind
that things over there are not perfectly organised,
because it's so difficult.
New people arrive, others leave, and numbers fluctuate.
New children may arrive
and depending on their age and gender,
we want to buy the appropriate toys for them, not get random toys.
So, that is why.
We must also keep in mind the possibility that by the time we get there,
the need for toys may have already been covered.
For example, a truck full of toys may have arrived the day before.
So, we won't deliver more toys as that doesn't make sense.
We'd have to take them to another camp
and distribute them according to that camp's population.
Cristian Sánchez: We know there is a lack of things more important than toys.
For example, lack of food and health care.
Also, as you know, there are many NGOs, organisations, and associations
who are committed to raising funds and sending them there,
where the NGO field operators distribute food and medicine.
We wanted to do something different, focusing on the children,
because we know that a toy can bring joy to a child's life.
It can restore the love for games
and help distract the child from its everyday reality.
It can also help the child make new friends through play.
We want children to go back to being children, like this.
If we stop ignoring the situation and accept what we see around us,
we could be that shooting star we were talking about before,
bringing a glimmer of hope
to all the children who lost their happiness long ago.
To help them to continue being the children they are,
let's be game changers.
Thank you so much for your attention.
(Applause)