A beautiful meeting..
The idea of our educational programme was well established in our mind when we ringed the bell of the Therapy Center for Dependent Individuals in the center of Athens. It was the 22nd of December and all four of us, Thanos Arbiros, Rafaelia Thiraiou, Daphne Rinte , we were really nervous and excited to meet with Mrs. Sotiria Papadopoulou, person in charge of KETHEA PLEFSI, an early intervention programme for adolescents. Mrs Papadopoulou welcomed us into a beautiful school and explained us what they do, their targets, the obstacles they meet but, above all, the amazing children they work with. It was obvious that Mrs Papadopoulou was passionate about helping and was more than enthusiastic to listen to us describing our educational programme for National Museum of Contemporary Art, let alone our intention to address this programme to adolescents of KETHEA.
Αs Mrs. Papadopoulou explained to us, KETHEA PLEFSI has been operating in Athens since 1996, and is KETHEA’s first early intervention network. It is intended both for young people under 21 who are making experimental, occasional or more systematic use of psychotropic substances, and for their families. Working in collaboration with the young people’s families, KETHEA PLEFSI seeks to create a family environment that will stop the abuse developing further, dissuade adolescents from experimenting with psychotropic substances, and stop them getting more deeply involved in narcotics. Services are also available for young people who develop problematic Internet use, and for their families. The programme offers short- and long-term individual counselling, family therapy, group therapy, vocational orientation and other activities based on a given family’s specific needs. Services are mainly provided in the afternoons and evenings so they do not interfere with the daily activities — school or work — of the young users and their parents. Special emphasis is placed on providing parents, professionals and the public at large with appropriate information on issues relating to adolescent use of psychotropic substances and problematic Internet use by means of leaflets, seminars and complete educational courses.
Their work and dedication to help children in need of security and stability spoke to us. We realised that this is exaclty what our education programme wants to communicate : The ability to move forward, no matter the circumstances you once faced. As we are not far from adolescence ourselves, we agreed with Mrs. Papadopolou that the best way to introduce ourselves as well as our cause to the children is by taking a walking tour through the exhibition. On each of the four thematic topics we have chosen to constitute our educational programme, we will have a short stop and a small discussion on the artworks, the story behind each of them and the feeling their sight creates to the viewer. Afterwards, we will explain to the children what were the motives behind our choice of artworks and what was the reason why we chose to talk about the rennaissance of one’s self. We aim to make them see how every single human being, especially at a young age, has to cope with a difficulty, and even though our backgrounds are not the same, we are not that different from them, and we all are not that different from each other. That, as a thought, is comforting, we believe. Mrs. Papadopoulou agreed with this structure of the programme and joyfully promised to guide through anything we may need.
Our next target is to complete the desing of the programme. We plan to complete it within the following week, as we are pressured by time. Since our first encounter, the museum and Mrs. Tsekou explained how it may be difficult to actualise our idea, but we will be more than happy to do it, even after the completion of our cooperation with the museum. We hope that we will be able to achieve this, but even if our responsibilities constrain us from doing it, we all agree that coming in touch with such inspirational enterprises as both the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the Therapy Center for Dependent Individuals, as well as the people in charge there, Mrs Tsekou and Mrs Papadopoulou, has been an incredibly educational experience for us. Looking forward for the next step!
To be continued..
