Our Project Begins

After an exhausting plane ride to Athens, I couldn’t wait to head over to The HOME Project. It had been two years since I had travelled to Greece (due to Covid).

I met with Vassili and Maria in the Home Project headquarters in Kolonaki to figure out the best way to implement my idea. We had been trading emails back and forth for a while, but meeting with them face-to-face (or mask-to-mask) was so much better. They filled me in on how difficult the past fifteen months had been for them. Greece has had a very strict lockdown and the children have had only a few months of in-person teaching. For the rest of the time, the kids were at home in the shelters doing online school with limited devices and internet that could not support so many devices. Like all children throughout the world, they were begging to go to school. The Home project did an incredible job keeping everyone safe and healthy and dealing with the added stress of covid. Many children were were even more anxious about families at home. In addition, many children who were waiting to move to other European countries were delayed even more because of Covid.

Vassili and Maria were supportive of my idea, because they are constantly striving to educate people about The Home Project and the refugee crisis, while respecting the privacy of their children. They discussed how art therapy is an important part of their counseling. We brainstormed about the types of questions that the kids should be asked in the interview portion of the project. They explained that we have to be sensitive to the trauma that they have been through.