Lake Aid

Lake Aid is a French nonprofit organization which provides fun activities and essential supplies for children of asylum seeking and homeless families in the Annecy region.

Its mission: advocate a welcoming and caring local community, through building relationships with families in need.

Lake Aid started in 2015 as a Facebook group. Its aim was to send warm clothing to refugee camps in Austria. After this mission was accomplished, they wanted to find ways of helping refugees closer to home. They started a Homework Club in a Night Shelter in Annecy.

Lake Aid became a Registered Charity in 2017. We started providing support for asylum-seeking families through outings and holiday camps, a Christmas Party, Baby Boxes for new mums and distributing school supplies.

Today, Lake Aid connects local residents with asylum-seeking and homeless families in the Annecy area. We work with other local charities to provide activities and essential supplies for children in need.

More recent projects have included making and selling Covid19 face masks with asylum-seeking women, sharing an allotment with a refugee family, offering activities and support to unaccompanied minors, and helping asylum-seeking women find legal and paid work.

The organization works in partnership with other local charities, including Secours Populaire, Ligue de Droits de l’Homme, Annecy Solidarite Migrants, Croix Rouge, Urgence Roms.

Lake Aid is 100% volunteer-run, with an elected board of 7 members. They meet every two months in person or remotely. All their meetings are Open Meetings and any member of our private Facebook group can join.

Around 40 active volunteers regularly help at Lake Aid events, and the organization is supported by over 600 members, including ConnectAID’s network of network which created several videos for their communication.

For more information, visit Lake Aid’s website.