Helen Zahos with lifejackets on Lesbos. Courtesy Aussie Volunteers Helping Refugees in Greece (Facebook page) Helen Zahos’s humanitarian work as a volunteer with refugees is a powerful example of how individuals can make a difference. She is an emergency nurse and paramedic born in 1977 in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory. She grew up on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, where her Greek migrant parents worked for the island’s mining company. She completed high school, a bachelor's in nursing and paramedical studies in Darwin. Helen has been a registered nurse since 1999 and a paramedic since 2000. She has a passion for indigenous health and worked in the remote aboriginal communities of the APY Lands from 2006 to 2009. Helen has extensive experience as a volunteer. In November 2013 she was deployed to the Philippines as part of the disaster response following Typhoon Haiyan. The year 2014 saw Helen's focus shift to refugee health and advocacy as she was employed on Christmas Island at Australia's asylum seeker detention centre. Whilst on vacation Helen volunteered in Greece during the financial crisis with the organization Medecine du Monde Grece, assisting pensioners and the underprivileged with medical care. She also worked at the Nauru detention centre. In April 2015 Helen volunteered on disaster response to the Nepal earthquake with the Non-Nepalese Residence Association, reaching remote areas in Ghorka and Ahrket. In August 2015 as images of refugees flooded social media, Helen campaigned to raise money for medical supplies, leaving in September to volunteer in Greece with Medecine Du Monde Grece on Lesbos Island. There she saw thousands of refugees fleeing Syria and surrounding countries and assisted with their medical care. Australia’s Neos Kosmos newspaper covered Helen’s activities in October 2015: Greek Australian volunteer nurse Helen Zahos reports on Lesvos’ migrant crisis: https://t.co/AE9HTUmdCf pic.twitter.com/P8aXRelYzY — NEOS KOSMOS (@NeosKosmos) October 21, 2015 Later Helen moved her efforts to the border of Macedonia (FYROM) and Greece where she was present for the first border closure and the subsequent riots that occurred soon after. Since returning to Australia, Helen has raised money to ship emergency equipment to Lesbos, donated by Ambulance Victoria. She is currently working as an emergency nurse at a Gold Coast hospital in Queensland. After a wide-ranging video conversation, Helen kindly answered some written questions about her experiences. Kevin Rennie (KR): Tell us about growing up in the Northern Territory. How did your formative years, especially those on Groote Island, help to prepare you for your work as a humanitarian volunteer? Helen Zahos (HZ): Groote Eylandt in the late 70’s and 80’s was a great place to grow up as a child. It was a small community that had a warm community spirit and I grew up being a part of that community focus. Organizations such as the Lions club and Girl Guides were very active on the island and there was always a fundraiser of some sort that I was involved with. The Groote Eylandt mining company was the main source of work on the island, which attracted many workers from diverse backgrounds from the local indigenous people to migrants from all over the world. This meant that my classmates at Alyangula Area School were all from different backgrounds and cultures. KR: In one of your video interviews, you said, “refugees are human beings… like you and me”. Please share some of your encounters that illustrate this. HZ: There were so many encounters that I had where I thought that could be me, or that could be my mother or father. I spoke with teachers that fled at gunpoint and hoped to resettle in Germany and one day teach gymnastics again. I had a professor from a university who helped me one day in the tent/clinic where we saw hundreds of people. As our interpreter was sick that day, he helped interpret and was mortified and embarrassed that he had been wearing the same clothes and had not changed his socks for 3 weeks. I spoke with a mother who was a teacher, her husband a lawyer, and she was pregnant and had a 4-year-old boy with her. She had left her husband behind. I helped a lady who had brought her own chemotherapy, having had dad go through chemotherapy before he died. I couldn’t believe we were setting this up in a dirty, dusty tent with no machinery or monitoring equipment, no blankets or cups of tea to help this woman’s therapy be more comfortable. How cruel… everyone had a story and everyone you could relate to. KR: You have referred to the sense of betrayal among some Greek people who see your work with refugees as a threat.