The man, aged 40, was in Greece in August 2015, when his life changed forever after being moved by the scenes he witnessed. Rather than return home to Kiesen, he talked it over with his wife, deciding to resign from his job and help out with the situation.
The jury of the award was impressed by how Raber left his family and gave up his job security to work with the refugees. The magazine offering the prize, Beobachter, described Buchi as a courageous man.
He set up the organization known as scheizerchruz.ch, that was manned by more than 100 volunteers to help refugees in Greece. Though the goal was to help refugees in Athens, it moved towards helping to rescue people shipwrecked off the coast of Lesbos. The group cooks for those living in migrant camps and distributed 14,000 pairs of shoes to people stranded on the border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).
Migrants number more than 12,000 on Greek islands
Migrants and refugees being hosted on the northern Aegean islands exceeded more than 12,000 in numbers on Monday. The refugee flow decreased for the first time in a fortnight to Lesbos (61 people), Chios (4,165 arrivals) and Samos (79 arrivals).
The tally so far shows that 5,499 persons were recorded on Lesvos, 4,210 on Chios and 2,316 on Samos, that altogether total 12,025 people.
In the last 48 hours, 45 refugees and migrants arrived on Lesvos, 56 on Chios while no arrivals were recorded on Samos.
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