{"id":26017171,"date":"2016-05-15T13:58:39","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T10:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/volunteering-in-lesvos-changed-my-life\/"},"modified":"2016-05-15T13:58:39","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T10:58:39","slug":"volunteering-in-lesvos-changed-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/volunteering-in-lesvos-changed-my-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteering in Lesvos changed my life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00abVolunteering at METAdrasi for three weeks was life changing. I learned what community, team work and advocacy through direct action look like when done effectively. I learned that you can be in a room where everyone speaks a different language and we can all communicate just fine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">METAdrasi teaches the illuminating lesson of love, using as a tool to address the devastating reality of unaccompanied children traveling through foreign countries to escape war and oppression &#8211; social, political and economic &#8211; by taking these children in and caring for them as their own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I cried because of the resilient beauty of the human spirit, while volunteering at METAdrasi. The Greek grandmother cooking, hugging, pinching cheeks and tearing up as another child leaves the home in Lesvos to journey to another in Athens. In saying goodbye to a talented, teenage, refugee artist, who is travelling alone with her younger brother; she helped me put together a solo exhibition in Athens. I encouraged her to keep creating, showed her artwork, taught her techniques and was able to stand in as a benevolent adult &#8211; something that had been done for me as a child under a different set of dire circumstances.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To me, this is the single most valuable thing \u0399 have done as an adult, the most revolutionary act of art \u0399 can muster, was to stand in solidarity with her.\u00bb<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/solidarity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#solidarity<\/span><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/lesvos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#Lesvos<\/span><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/greece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#Greece<\/span><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/refugeecrisis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#refugeecrisis<\/span><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/unaccompaniedminors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#UnaccompaniedMinors<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/volunteering-in-lesvos-changed-my-life\/\">Volunteering at METAdrasi for three weeks was life changing&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":387113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"class_list":["post-26017171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26017171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26017171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26017171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26017171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26017171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26017171"},{"taxonomy":"dipi_cpt_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metadrasi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dipi_cpt_category?post=26017171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}