Online counselling for
refugees with Pena.ger
Who or what is Pena.ger? How long has Pena.ger been around?
Social and legal counsellors and activists from Oldenburg and the surrounding area have founded a nationwide online counselling service for refugees in Kurdish, English, German and Turkish. Pena.ger tries to support those seeking advice, especially with regard to the local structure, as they are often unfamiliar with it. Its activities include asylum procedure counselling and the provision of guidance. The initiative addresses questions such as: ‘What does the Dublin procedure mean?’, ‘How do I change my address at the BAMF?’ ‘Where can I go for migration counselling?’ or ’How do I prepare for an interview as a queer person?’
Pena.ger was founded in mid-December 2023 and has advised and supported more than 1,300 people to date. This is done after hours and free of charge.
Pena.ger refers to the combination of two Kurdish words pena (shelter/help) and ger (search/seeker). The compound word is also based on penaber for refugees. This name was chosen to refer to someone who is seeking protection or needs help.
Why did you see a reason to form a group? What is your origin story?
The German government has agreed to the demolition of European asylum law. By amending the ‘Common European Asylum System’, international asylum and refugee law has effectively been abolished. Refugees are to be penalised for their flight and for their right to a dignified life. This is compounded by the inhumane budget cuts in the area of migration, as this reduces and complicates civil society support. If the answer to the German migration society is budget cuts by the federal government in the area of migration counselling, then our answer is grassroots organisation. And it is from this grassroots organisation that pena.ger was born.
Pena.ger was also created after the death of Hogir Alay. His decomposed body was found hanging behind the gymnasium of the refugee camp in Kusel, Rhineland-Palatinate, on 4 November. The 24-year-old Kurd had contacted the BAMF, the centre’s translators and the immigration authorities about the miserable and inhumane treatment in the refugee accommodation, but none of them took his concerns seriously or forwarded and translated them, thereby failing in any way to fulfil their duty to help and support him. The terrible case of Hogir Alay raises many unanswered and unresolved questions for the family, friends and the public and makes it painfully clear how important empathetic and good counselling and support is.
How are you organised? What kind of people/how many people are behind Pena.ger?
The core team of Pena.ger consists of four counsellors; lawyers or activists are consulted for some issues or questions.
Which people does Pena.ger support and how do you support them?
Due to the lack of structures and the limited availability of Kurdish-speaking and sensitized counsellors, the online counselling service Pena.ger focuses in particular on low-threshold referral counselling in German, English, Kurdish and Turkish.
Kurds, Yazidis, queer people, LGBTQIA+ and people with disabilities are particularly vulnerable and invisible on various levels. This makes it all the more important to provide them with contact points and services in their own language. We try to support those seeking advice, especially with regard to local structures, as they are often unfamiliar with them. The activities include asylum procedure advice as well as the provision of guidance and more.
What are the biggest hurdles in your work?
Tighter political conditions for refugees also make the counseling situation more difficult, which leads to increasing stress, despair, anger and helplessness. In challenging counseling situations due to restrictive migration policies, it is important to be honest with those seeking advice and to make it clear that Pena.ger cannot prevent deportation, for example. At the same time, Pena.ger can offer support by providing information about rights, solidarity structures and other points of contact. Pena.ger can help those seeking advice to deal with these burdens and find ways of coping.
We recognize the positive experiences and successes in the advisory context in order to maintain our own motivation and further expand Pena.ger so that we can help even more people. We are also exposed to these stresses.
Our personality is a central working tool, we recognize our own limits and treat ourselves with care. In conclusion, we would like to point out that dealing with paid work and voluntary work should not only be considered at an individual level. We are striving for parallel institutional and political changes. Let’s see…
What are your goals in your work at Pena.ger?
First and foremost, our aim is to clarify the concerns of those seeking advice and to inform them about their rights in the aforementioned fields of activity. Another goal is to inform multipliers and various advice centers about our services and to raise awareness so that they can pass on our services in their respective cities and regions. Furthermore, we are looking for language mediators who speak the institutional language German and additionally speak either Kurdish (all dialects), Turkish, Farsi or/and Arabic; also in the form of telephone language mediators, as counseling centers would also like support in this form, because there are no Kurdish-speaking and sensitized language mediators in many places and regions. Our goal is to establish a nationwide pool of language mediators to ensure broader support in different marginalized languages. Pena.ger is responsible for coordinating this pool. Whether we help 1,300 people or one, what counts for us is the successful connection to structures.
There are also plans to develop complaint structures and establish local pena.ger advice centers in various cities and regions in order to create a nationwide point of contact for those seeking advice. This is highly relevant in view of increasing complaints from refugees about intra-migrant racism and institutional discrimination as well as the need for political and institutional change.
How can other people support you and your work?
We have received many inquiries from advice centers and initiatives and are currently in the process of setting up our cooperation structures together. Anyone interested in supporting us can contact us: The online counseling service can be reached on Instagram at @pena.ger, on X also Twitter @penagerr and by e-mail at pena.ger[@]yahoo.com. As we are not yet an association, we are happy to receive any donation.
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