New perspectives of the polis
After one month the beginning is over and this means that you are starting to adapt to the new environment, you have to build a new home here. In my case my adaptation to the “new life” here took a good way, I started to know the city and that means that I feel more comfortable to unfold myself in any activity, whether by myself riding the bicycle to new places of Thessaloniki or by going with friends to cultural spaces to listen music or participate in different events.
Regarded to the volunteering program with the unaccompanied minors in Pylea’s Shelter, I continued to teach English and Spanish, but also to participate in some activities and sports as drums or football, in order to strengthen the relations between us. When you come to the Shelter and spend some time here you can notice the great difference between what is it to have a developed education taught by western countries and not to have it at all, the former should appreciate what he/she has because it is an essential tool nowadays. In the case of the minors I work with, many of them didn’t even have the opportunity to go to school and learn how to write, thus they have to start from the bottom in many fields of their life (language, culture, personal spaces, friends, etc.) and here is where the hosting countries should do an effort to integrate these children properly. Here I also realized how the European or western dream it is not true at all, or at least it is not how they have heard. The reality is that many of these developed countries are not taking a mature attitude towards this migration crisis, in a big scale when government policies prefer to invest on technology or economics rather than in empathetic laws as the integration of people in risk of exclusion as this target group. At least is my perspective when I look over the whole capacity of a country and its development level. Therefore, the social integration of these refugees is even harder and can lead into frustration or lack of motivation because many of these countries doesn’t have enough tools to deal with them. By these I don’t mean that Greece doesn’t have a good way to organize the “refugees wave”, they do it as better as they can, but that this huge problem could be solved by stopping the political and economic wars between countries.
Anyway, I would like to highlight the essential role of the first aid workers of these countries as Greece, where I am. Because without them many of these people would be even without the basic needs covered.
