Time’s running…
I cannot believe that already two weeks have passed!
Today I will share a bit more details about the work of Earth Refugee in the site known as ‘Sounio’.
As the designated Site Management Support actor, Earth Refugee oversees the services on-site and coordinates communication between on-site officials from the Hellenic Navy and the Ministries of Migration Policy and Education, as well as members of a council of elected site residents. Also, Organization Earth has the responsibility for every project run on-site by other NGOs.
Refugees have only a few opportunities to better utilize their time in Greek camps. Most likely, a lot of activities are designed only for Children and education is a big problem. This is also the case for adults. Earth Refugee staff coordinates daily educational and recreational activities in Sounio camp for children and adults. They offer women-only classes and activities such as maternity and pregnancy seminars. Beside this, they offer a special development program for adults including e.g. European laws and cultural and deployment skills such as CV-writing, job search strategies and interview preparation.
More programs are planned, such as a Community Kitchen for resident-driven food preparation and a Refugee Camp Garden maintained from interested residents. All this will help to improve the living conditions of Refugees!
What we achieved so far?
Our first two weeks in Athens were very intense with long working days. We have conducted several interview with across Organization Earth. This gave us the opportunity to gather a lot of information from employees and volunteers to get a deeper insight into the work of Organization Earth and especially of Earth Refugee, to understand the different roles and responsibilities and where they see opportunities for improvement for the organization.
To discuss and describe our findings we have spent a whole day together. This was an interesting experience because more than once we have passionately represented our different opinions. However, in the end we always found a common approach and we started to work on our final recommendations and deliverables.
What else we did?
Besides our daily work we also spend time together with the wider team ‘Elpida’ (Greek word for ‘Hope’). This is a good opportunity to understand how the projects of all sub-teams proceed, to discuss and exchange ideas but also to get to know each other better. So I’ve learned already a lot from my colleague Marco, who is pushing me to deal with social media :)
At the end of the week we all had the need to have a break. Thanks to our colleague Marco, who planned our trip to Astir Beach on Saturday, we enjoyed a day of rest to recharge our batteries. It ended up with a great sunset.
On Sundays Organization Earth opens the gates to their ‘Center of the Earth’ for the people of Athens to join the Communal Cook-Outs during the ‘Sunday on Earth’ activity. Organization Earth invited our wider team to join this event and also the activities they offered during the day. Some of us joined their first yoga class, others helped together with Greek volunteers to prepare the food. It was nice to see how many families accept this offer and how much fun the children have on the farm, especially as Organization Earth offers the food without payment. At the end everyone can voluntarily give a sum of money in a box to contribute to the goals of the organization. Our visit ended with a private tour of the farm and the gardens.
This summarize again a full week of new experiences with my fantastic colleagues Anthony and Marco and also with Team ‘Elpida’.
More to share next week.
Follow also blogs of my other colleagues from the SAP Social Sabbatical team in Greece:
