For those who do not know, since September I have been working as a communications intern at Fundació ACSAR, an NGO that seeks to aid asylum seekers on multiple levels as well as raise awareness about their situation among the local community and global society. The foundations ultimate goal is "to contribute to the creation of a diverse and pluralistic society, while promoting equal rights of citizenship for all" (taken from the website in Spanish and translated by me and google).
My duties and responsibilities here involve communicating with the partner NGO’s in Athens, translating documents from Catalan and Castellano into English, updating the website and social media pages with current statistics on the refugee crisis, and editing partnership agreements and grant proposals for potential new projects. I love the exposure that I am getting to the administrative side of the nonprofit industry here. I want to work with nonprofits as my career, and my new technical ability is promoting lots of personal and professional growth. This past week, ACSAR sent me to Athens so that I could see the impact that my work had on real people. ACSAR currently has 8 incredible volunteers and 1 staff member living in Athens, who took me under their wing and showed me a glimpse into their life there. It was an experience I will never forget.
They are all Spanish, so I practiced more Castellano in Greece than I do in Spain! I spent my time interviewing local nonprofit employees that are partners with ACSAR, volunteering in Eleonas, the refugee camp, and exploring Athens. I even met a boy who gave me a ride through downtown Athens on his motorcycle!
The interviews with Greek Migrant Forum and Solidarity Now fell a little flat because of the language barrier, but I still saw them as motivated individuals that dedicated their lives to helping the helpless. Fortunately, I had really meaningful interviews with Suha of Humanity Crew, Gionnis of Praksis, and Andreas, founder of Project Elea, who each gave me a new perspective and altered my personal lens of the world. They drove home the point that no one wants to be a refugee, a fact that European and North American governments are having trouble understanding. Humanity Crew is composed entirely of native Arabic and Farsi speakers, many of whom are refugees or descendants of refugees, who provide mental health interventions and psychological aid to refugees in their native tongue. Praksis supports unaccompanied minors by giving them shelter, financial support, mentorship, and English classes. Project Elea and the volunteers who work at Eleonas do an amazing job to make a barren conglomerate of shipping containers into a vibrant, livable community.
The European Union states that these camps are supposed to be "temporary" homes until the refugees asylum applications are processed and they can either be relocated or deported, but no one in the camp is disillusioned by this claim. Refugees live there for an average of 2 years. Some residents create little businesses selling falafel or traditional dishes from their country to residents and volunteers. Many refugees, with no purpose and nothing to do, turn to gangs, drugs, violence, and wandering listlessly among the containers. Teenagers who were sent on the deadly journey alone, their optimistic families hoping that the family reunification act would pull them to safety, have gone months or years without hearing from their loved ones. They turn 18, uneducated, unemployable, and no longer under protection of the unaccompanied minors act. Children are born amidst horrific violence and "escape" to places where they live like animals in a dirty, overcrowded, cruel zoo. Countries deny that asylum seekers are drowning in their waters until dead bodies washed up on shore forces them to admit to numbers far below reality. Governments purposefully keep the coastal refugee camps below humane living conditions to deter more refugees from arriving, as if the minimal chances of making the crossing and arriving alive were not deterrent enough.
Despite this, most residents of Eleonas are optimistic, happy, and eternally grateful to the volunteers. Volunteers and residents work together to paint the containers to make them look more appealing, build handmade furniture, and plant flower beds to bring a little life to the endless cement. Volunteers also run activities all day, every day (except for Sundays) to engage adults and children alike. Kids under 6 go to Little School to learn basic English words and other skills, such as cutting with scissors. There are camp wide basketball tournaments, Zumba classes, and occasional excursions into Athens. Every Friday night, teens go to Teen Talk, where they can express their joys and frustrations, and relate to other teenagers in their same situation. Eleonas is the 5 star resort of refugee camps, and the residents who end up there know how lucky they are.
When I wasn't teaching a Zumba class, painting a handmade bookshelf, sorting clothes, interviewing residents, refereeing kids soccer, or simply watching and learning about life at Eleonas refugee camp I was exploring Athens. I did a free walking tour, saw the Evzones of the Presidential Guard and the changing of the guards, and went to Acropolis to see the ruins of ancient Greece and look over the whole city. I learned that a marathon is 26.2 miles/42.2 kilometers because a soldier ran that exact distance from Marathon to Athens to announce the defeat of the Persians. The famous commemorative Athens marathon was this weekend, and the city was full of sightseeing runners. I bought a little wooden sailboat on a spring from a street vendor, enjoyed the warm weather, and wandered the quintessentially Greek streets. At night the other volunteers and I window shopped and bonded amid the little string lights of the downtown district. We stopped for a beer at one place, a glass of wine at another, and had traditional Greek dinner at a rooftop restaurant.
The third day I was sitting outside a greek cafe eating spinach pie and drinking the liquid magic that is Greek hot chocolate, listening to the plethora of languages around me (I counted at least 5: Greek, Farsi, Arabic, Spanish, and English), and enjoying the sun when it hit me. I am happier than I have ever been. I feel smart, strong, healthy, I have a purpose that is really important to who I am, I am learning, I am engaged, I am spending a lot of time outside, I am growing, I am constantly meeting new people. In short: I am thriving. I am beyond grateful to my prior self for deciding to study abroad and sticking through it when it sucked, to my parents for encouraging me, allowing me to pursue what I love debt-free, and for instilling in me the necessity of travel and experiencing new cultures, and to the massive support system that allows me to return to familiarity when spending so much time outside my comfort zone exhausts me. I am living, unperturbed by the past and the future. I am without want. And I never want it to end.
Now that I am home in Barca, I have tons of content from interviews that I want to turn into a project that I can share about my time there. I need help thinking of something so if you have any ideas, please let me know!!
Edit: I did convert the content from the interviews into 2 videos (English and Spanish) to recruit new volunteers to help at Eleonas refugee camp.
Edit #2: While I LOVED Athens, it's important to remember that these posts often only include the highlights and my favorite parts of the trip. I often did not feel safe traveling alone in Athens, especially at night. I tried to go out with my new friends one night and was really disturbed by the amount of violence, drugs, and unnatractive behavior that I saw from the incredibly poor population that lived on the streets or in slums there - many of them refugees. I wasn't having fun and opted to go back to the volunteers apartment I was staying in. After the taxi dropped me off a guy followed me and tried to steal my cell phone. I was really scared and ended up running to the apartment without surrendering any of my things. I was happy that nothing happened, but in retrospect he could have gotten violent with me or started chasing me after I refused to give him what he wanted.
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