by Anastasia Lampaki, Rhodes Volunteer Community, Greece
Is it possible for Rhodes Volunteer Community to help the local area through its participation in the Key to Connection?
Many years before, when our leader, Stellalena Nalmpanti, was living in Rhodes, she decided to establish an informal volunteer organization, the Rhodes Volunteer Community. Since then, many beneficial for the local area activities have taken place. With our participation in the Erasmus program, the Key to Connection, we strongly believe, that we will contribute and reinforce the general great work that has happened due to the action of this volunteer team. So, here are some ideas of how our participation at the Key to Connection, will bring advantageous impacts in the local community of Rhodes.
To begin with, as every local community on this earth, the community of Rhodes consists of different inner social teams. Some of these, such us immigrants, refugees that have come from the Middle east, where war is still unfortunately in progress, youths for the settlement of Roma people, with a very special but sometimes backward-looking civilization, youths that face financial problems and youths from the outskirts who tend to be more isolated than the other youths, do not have as many opportunities as the youths who don’t belong in these social teams. As our program, and the workshops that must be implemented for it, intend to include a mixed team, which will be consisted of youths that society sometimes seem to discriminate in favor of, and of youths that don’t face such problems, we believe that the message that will be given to every participant for consideration, is that everyone matters in an equal way. Youths that will understand and respect the diversity as a value, will probably build in the future a world without discrimination!
Furthermore, we would like to mention at this point, that youths in Rhodes are mostly forced by their families and school, to find themselves in sports. There are many associations of basketball, swimming, football, and of other sports, but only a few dance studios or conservatories. It’s an undeniable fact that physical education is really beneficial for the human body, but has anyone ever thought that maybe some youths want to be artists? Our proposal is that by involving youths in exercises that mostly use kinesthetic methods, which are more relevant to dance and expression through body movement, maybe some of the youth participants could be inspired and start searching by themselves more things about art, if they feel they can express themselves through this way.
Inspiration will not only be bred for searching about arts, but in general for searching the informal ways of learning , such as kinesthetic that we propose through our workshops, and maybe the participation of someone in our workshop will prove to be the perfect opportunity for him to find a different way, which fits him/ her better, to learn things! Youths could also be inspired by the general action, by the fact that four countries decided to cooperate to achieve a common goal, and this will maybe bring up their desire to start being involved in future Erasmus programs like the Key to Connection, their desire to connect with people from other countries for achieving something, like we do, their desire to dream about upcoming great things to do that will be helpful for the next generations of youths after them! Isn’t it great when youths dream of a better world to be established?
To conclude, we are sure that these are just some of the beneficial impacts, that with our participation in the Key to Connection we hope to bring to the local community of Rhodes and we are really looking forward to infer if some of them, all of them or more, will really come true!
the Key to Connection is implemeneted in the framework of Erasmus+: Youth in Action programme – key action 2, Strategic Partnership for exchange experiences
