NEVER ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN

“THEY ARE THE SAME, BUT WITH A VERY-VERY DIFFICULT FUTURE WITHOUT OUR HELP”

“I knew about the situation here in Piraeus, I just didn’t know how to help. I didn’t want to provide these children with water, food, papers — there are a lot of people who do it. I wanted more. I wanted to give them my free time and to commit myself to them”.

These words belong to a person who literally has changed a part of my life. But I will start from the beginning.

Within the course called “Introduction to Advertising and Public Relations” that I am taking at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences we were obliged to implement a project. Our team has chosen as important as difficult topic which concerns Children of Refugees. We decided to focus on the development aid they are provided with here in Athens. Shortly, our concern was if there are any educational programs in camps that these children are able to be involved in.

“Organising activities is important because it is about creating a safe environment for children. Here children are really deprived. They are deprived of education, happiness, games, expressing themselves”, — Alina, a volunteer in a port of Piraeus, is saying.

Port of Piraeus is one of the informal camps for refugees in Greece. At first, here were more than 5000 of refugees, and now after processes of closing borders in March and moving people to official camps in April-May, here you can find about 1000 refugees. There are people who came from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq and now they are staying here in tents. And as it has a free access we visited this place a lot of times. And what we have noticed is that children mostly have nothing to do here and all day and every day they are just playing football.That is why I was so surprised to meet there students from Theatre University, such as Alina and Dimitris. Without any knowledge of the children’s original language, they were playing with these children, they were dancing and producing some theatrical movements all together. All this performance seemed unbelievable! Crawling with some funny expressions on their faces was enough to understand each other. Evidently, they were having fun.

Then I asked Alina: “Why are you doing it here?”

“I believe that this way we can show our solidarity for these people. Every child has a right for education. And it is not only about writing and reading skills; it is also about creative environment where they can express themselves. It is important for children at school where I am teaching, and it is equally important for these children. They are the same, but with a very very difficult future without our help”, — she answered.

Then she added:

“It is not enough, of course. You can see here the same volunteers every day. I want more people from our school to come here. I want more people from the world to come here!”.

Honestly, I was impressed by her thoughts, ideas and actions. And this has given me strengths and courage to continue our project.