Community House Damaris

Volunteer Opportunities: Yes

History

For nearly ten years, Dina – founder of Community House Damaris (CHD) – worked as a volunteer in some of the 300 brothels of downtown Athens serving victims of exploitation and trafficking. She found that the girls she was ministering to faced huge barriers to escape their situation as they were largely without families, papers, money, language proficiency, or the skills to find a job outside of a brothel. During this time, she realized that something more was necessary. For years, she prayed for the opportunity to provide a safe place for these women to find freedom, experience restoration, and begin reintegration into society.

Dina had a vision of an organization that would become Damaris House – a place where survivors of trafficking and exploitation could live in safety while learning the emotional and practical skills enabling them to eventually reintegrate into society. She evaluated and visited models of these type of programs across North America.

In 2015, she adopted the program of Servants Anonymous (SA) Foundation in Canada because of its depth, length, and results in the lives of the participants. She took the first steps of implementing this model by inviting seven women who embraced her vision to form the legal body of CHD. In March 2016, CHD was established as a nonprofit organization in Athens, Greece. Her vision became a reality, and a suitable house was found which was fully renovated and equipped in order to host the Residential and Day Program participants, as well as the organization’s offices. The Day Program launched on April 15, 2016 and in May the first participants moved into the safe house.

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Six years now (2022) and Community House Damaris continues to grow and develop. Since its opening in 2016 we have experience 2 significant expansions. The first, in March of 2017, the offices and the Day Program were transferred to a new, larger building. The Second, in 2021 we acquired a 2nd home which can serve almost double that of the first home increasing our reach to 14 women and their babies.  We also acquired two apartments for our Phase II participants.

Six years after establishing Community House Damaris, 44 women have been served by CHD and sought recovery from trafficking and exploitation. 43 children have had mothers in the program 17 of which were born at CHD. To read more of our results, visit our Program Results page.

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Community House Damaris is based on the Christian heritage of creating safe places for the vulnerable and care for the needy. For many of our sex-trafficked and exploited survivors this will be the first safe place that they experience unconditional love and -hopefully- find hope and purpose. We are named in honor of the first female Christian convert, Damaris, when the Apostle Paul preached in Athens.

Mission

Empowering women and their children

– who have been sexually exploited and trafficked –

with the opportunity for recovery, restoration, and reintegration.

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For this reason, we:

1. Provide a long-term Residential Program with trauma informed care in a safe environment.
2. We provide a long-term and holistic Day Program to guide survivors into full rehabilitation and reintegration into society by addressing their needs.
3. We train, network and promote awareness in the community of this demographic’s specific needs. 

Vision

A FREE AND RESTORED LIFE FOR ALL SEX TRAFFICKED & EXPLOITED GIRLS, AND THEIR CHILDREN