Empower Athens' Displaced people through community

Dear Friends and Supporters of the Library,

Greetings from Kypseli, Athens. I trust that you and your families had a restful and enjoyable summer.

I’m very pleased to report that the We Need Books Library remained open for most of the summer, we only closed for one week in August. The place was hopping with a variety of activities, events, workshops for children and adults, cataloguing of our books, and preparation for programs scheduled to begin this fall. And all that accompanied by the beautiful sound of laughter of the children visiting the library.

We held lots and lots of activities and the centerpiece of them all was the mini eco festival: “An Eco Activist is Born – festival against climate change” we organised.  The aim of the festival was to engage and empower young people in our community, and not only, to become more active in defending the climate, either by advocacy or by changing their own habits. It was part of the European movement #climateofchange and in partnership with ActionAid Greece. It took place on four consecutive Saturdays between June 18th and July 9th, at We Need Books Multilingual Library and Cultural Center in Athens. It was organized around four themes: activism, climate refugees, eco anxiety and the economy of wellbeing.  For each theme, a two-hour workshop was organized, followed by a screening of a relevant documentary.  Among the participants, there were locals, visitors, refugees and migrants. Participants had the opportunity to discuss their concerns, and to be informed about aspects of climate change that they had little or zero knowledge about. Different opinions were heard and from the feedback we received we concluded that the majority were energized into taking a more active role in the fight against climate change and into seeking reliable information.  

As mentioned earlier, in September 2022 we will introduce an after school tutoring program for 35 elementary school children whose parents are not able to support them with homework, either because they don’t speak Greek, because of their own poor educational background or work related responsibilities. The program was designed, and is implemented with the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, as a response to the severe educational and psychosocial gaps that the COVID pandemic had on children, especially children from low-income families.  Apart from individualized academic support, the program also addresses the needs of children for artistic expression, through art workshops. It was during the summer that the We Need Books team worked hard to make all the required preparations for the successful start of the program.  We collaborated with the local public schools to announce the program; developed a student application process; developed and published a teacher job description; interviewed and selected a teacher.  The team is very excited about this program and we will periodically share with you how it is progressing.

I cannot thank you enough for being a part of the We Need Books family. Your contributions have supported our community programming, which empower the most vulnerable in our community. The support of generous donors such as yourself has helped us achieve more than we’d ever imagined.

With Gratitude, 

Dear friends,

We are happy to share with you what we've been up to these past few months.

Earlier in the year, it came to our attention that a group of refugee girls who were coming to the library were not attending school. We found out that the reason was their parents' hope that they would soon be relocated to another country and saw learning Greek as a waste of time. In order to ease the girls back into education -they have been out of school for three years!- we organized English classes for them. They never miss a class and they are all smiles the moment they come into the library! Plus they are slowly starting to participate in our other cultural activities for children. I was eavesdropping on their class the other day, hearing how they want to become teachers and doctors and dentists when they grow up and I couldn't believe my ears! Were these the same girls who couldn't speak a word in English a few months back? Their verbal and reading skills have skyrocketed! They are making so much progress! 

We have also started a bi-weekly parents' group, and we are organizing therapeutic writing workshops for adults, both coordinated by mental health professionals. We are hosting a weekly Language Cafe for English and Greek practice and we are getting ready to participate in Refugee Week, which is taking place in Greece for the first time this June. We also hosted a group of volunteers from customer.io who, among other things, got our back yard all ready for summer, freshly painted, weeded and planted! And we are delighted to say that over 3,700 books have been added to our lending section and are available to our 127 library members! 

But we would be lying if we said the obstacles we have to overcome and the challenges we to have face every day don't get to us from time to time. Usually they have to do with paying the rent and other operational costs. These, however, have been overshadowed by co-founder Nadir's second arrest since the beginning of the year. Nadir has been living in Greece for 20 years as an asylum seeker and he still hasn't been given permanent resident status. His permit needs to be renewed every two years, a procedure which often takes a year, leaving him and thousands of other refugees and migrants with no papers, no right to work, to access to their bank accounts and unprotected against police arrests. It is difficult to talk about social integration of refugees in a meaningful way, when the ground they are building their future on is so shaky.  

Thank you for your kindness all this time, 

Ioanna Nisyriou