From the 5 Why’s of Equal Opportunity in a Racial Context, to Project W and our vision of World Peace
Before my colleagues and I came together as the Project W team, the Social Issues, Social Innovation and Corporate Responsibility course had already caught my eye as an interesting learning opportunity. Growing up, I was, still am, eager to take on any chance to do research and shed light on important, current issues that need it.
With my dad being a Syrian immigrant, I, of course, was set on focusing my 5 Why’s on the very prominent issue of equal opportunity in a racial context. As a second generation immigrant, I wasn’t content with just the existence of raggedy asylums, a few public food kiosks and clothes’ donations made by NGOs in Greece to the immigrants and refugees in need — I figured I had always had plenty of food, clothes and a warm home of my own, growing up with two financially stable parents, one of which was my middle class, greek mom.
I was, however, interested in getting these people to the next step, beyond the necessities of everyday life; I wanted to learn how they would be properly educated and acclimated, so that they wouldn’t be in need for the rest of their lives in Greece, but would reach financial stability, their own academic achievements, work opportunities and ultimately, live in this country like it has always been their home. That was the only issue I had seen my dad struggle with, his first few years in Greece;
he didn’t have a way with the greek language just yet, and that, combined with his foreign last name and zero social connections, made it very difficult for him to be granted the respect and opportunities he deserved based on his degrees and work ethic. How would one go about not just ensuring survival of these individuals, but also their academic, entrepreneurial and financial equality and success?
In order to understand how this could be achieved, I collaborated with Lenny; a good friend I had previously made through social media, that is a long term volunteer in organisations dealing with immigrant and refugees’ acclimation worldwide. Glad that she was back from her volunteering year in France, I was excited to hear all about her latest work with the METAdrasi organisation, and learn more about her role and experience as a language and culture teacher there.
The METAdrasi organisation has been operating since 2009, with the mission to cover the detrimental gaps in education and integration of both immigrants and refugees into the greek society. METAdrasi is determined to support and protect, through its multiple groundbreaking initiatives, the fundamental rights of all that are pushed aside or unjustly prosecuted.
What really aligned with my interest in these individuals’ acclimation and ground-laying for future opportunities, were METAdrasi’s public chaperoning initiative, which ensures the safety of immigrant and refugee children that wish to attend school and other activities, as well as their various levels of greek language courses, for all different kinds of ages, ethnic backgrounds and linguistic differences of all student groups.
Lenny opened up to me about how she mainly began volunteering as a multilingual teacher to these kids (for the most part, though she teaches adult classes as well) because she loves the honest relationships she gets to build through her sessions with them, and all the new things she gets to learn through her students. She also stressed the importance of more young people using their skillsets to integrate immigrants and refugees into the academic and later on, the entrepreneurial world of their new countries of residence, so that they become useful and established members of society in the future. Lenny firmly believes that no matter how hard a job like hers can get, her passion about human rights that led her to this amazing work has never let her down. She talked about how she loves seeing her students’ faces the moment they get to know about their rights, new values they weren’t familiar with, and learning how to build a new life here, using those tools.
Ultimately, Lenny is sure both parties have so much to gain from programs like this, and I couldn’t agree more.
The METAdrasi organisation also kindly provided me with optical material such as an insightful in-class video of one of the sessions of cultural acclimating of the students, as well as photographic material and links of their various press releases, that helped me put together a well-rounded presentation and understand their initiative deeper.
Later on, when my colleagues and I came to be Project W, I was glad to not lose this character that I wanted my work to have this semester; social issues and realistic solutions to them. During our multiple meetings with the other members of Project W, we all talked about each other’s 5 Why’s and came to the realisation that they all revolved about a conflict of humanitarian nature. All of our causes were unique, and so as to not leave any out of our focus for this semester, we decided to work on the ground rule for all of them to ever be resolved; world peace.
Of course, we all realised that world peace, while quite the big and serious topic, is already a ‘state’ that most of us are currently living under — maybe even have taken for granted. It might be due to the fact that declarations of war are not as common nowadays — or maybe we are just too caught up in our everyday lives to be concerned about its maintenance.
However, how sure can one be that world peace is an everlasting human achievement that doesn’t need to be watched over? With the recent events of police brutality, abuse victims coming forward, racial inequality protests, all resulting in the deaths of innocent citizens, the terrorist attacks and mass homicides; suddenly, the illusion of world peace becomes more evident. And that was exactly what led us to our TED talk project, where I was incredibly lucky to represent our team as the key speaker.
Our work diagram was very simple. We split the work load into four parts; the video shooting and speaking, the organisation of the video content, the heavier editing, and then the report writing of a summary for our video. First, we all came together and discussed all the points we hoped to make in our video. The character of it should be informative yet fun, smart and a little caustic yet still friendly, something you would remember when the video was over. Furthermore, the video itself should resemble a TEDtalk as much as possible, meaning that, as I would film it, some gestures (like pointing to a slideshow panel behind my imaginary TED stage) would have to be faked, then added later on in the montage process. We worked on a script as well, though that was ultimately unnecessary as I had memorised most of it by the time the multiple takes I had to shoot were over! It was probably for the best as well, seeing as the end result was very natural and smooth. When all of the material had been filmed by me, it was sent to our colleague for further editing and the addition of the “slideshow” we incorporated, and once that was ready to go as well, we posted it on Youtube as per the course instructions, adding the summary paragraph in the bio as well as posting in on the Teams platform.
We were thrilled by the responses we received from our fellow students as soon as the video was up, and the feedback from our professor as well. I think I speak for all of my teammates when I say it was an incredible experience that gave us a lot of insight on content creation, but more than anything, it was exciting to be a part of something as seemingly complex as a TEDtalk, and realising how stuff must work behind the scenes in order for the talk to be successful.
Last but not least, I personally learned how to work on my mannerisms and hand gestures so as to convey everything we hoped to, without coming off as shy, hesitant or unfocused.
Turns out, Lenny was right! Working on social issues that seem to call for your action? Definitely an all-sides gain.
Check my colleagues’ amazing work out:
Crystal
Basiliki Tomazou
Eleni Perperidou
Χριστίνα Βασιλάκη
Ioulia Ntoka
And our special thanks to our incredible professor:
Betty Tsakarestou
