One Bolton resident is campaigning for Greater Manchester to do more to support refugees and asylum seekers stuck abroad during the coronavirus.

Freda Crook, 26, a teacher from Farnworth has been working with refugees since her time at university, working with the Destitution Project in ­Bolton, volunteering with NGOs in Greece, and most recently with a group she help set up called Greater Manchester Must Act.

As a teacher she volunteers and helps refugees by teaching them skills such as picking up new languages.

Freda first started working directly with refugees whilst studying a Masters at Newcastle University and took this further when starting volunteering at the Destitution Project at the Victoria Hall.

The Destitution Project offers help and education to asylum seekers and refugees in Bolton who are unable to get support anywhere else.

Freda described them as a non-political group run by a "friendly group of pensioners just wanting to offer support".

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Although she had experience working with refugees, a trip to volunteer and teach on the Greek Island of Samos was an eye opening experience for Freda.

She said: "I was asked to go over there by an NGO as they were in need of teachers.

"What I found was despicable.

"There was no provision for learning at all, and the children on the island had no right to education.

"I was told the camp only had room for 650 people when I was going there but there were over 7,500 people, 2,500 of them unaccompanied children, when I got there.

"There's a massive need to get them off the island."

Freda described how it became unsafe for her to stay on the island, due to anti-refugee violence and she returned to the UK at the start of this year.

Freda and another Greater Manchester based volunteer, Catherine Garnett, decided to set-up an organisation to raise awareness of these people's struggles, which have heightened during the coronavirus, called Greater Manchester Must Act ­— part of Europe Must Act.

Freda said: "These people are not safe, if coronavirus were to get into a camp it would be devastating.

"Governments should be doing more to help, they don't have to take that many to make a big impact.

"We're not trying to shame governments, they just all need to do their bit, take their fair share."

Freda described the positive impact refugees have on communities such as Bolton, bringing new cultures to places, and how these are desperate people trying to escape poverty and war with their family.

She said: "We want to explain it to people in a positive way, from people who have been there and seen it themselves."

Greater Manchester Must Act took part in a day of action on Saturday May 23 to raise awareness of the dangers that people are living through in places such as Samos ­— "They can't cope."

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For more information or to sign their petition to Andy Burnham, visit change.org/greater-manchester-must-act.