Kouvaras

Transcription

"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." Personally, I'd like to say that this phrase bothers me a lot. Very, very much. For two main reasons. (Laughter) First, I don't believe in conspiracy theories at all, and secondly because essentially... it's like telling me: "Lie on your couch and the universe will arrange everything." It is, in my view, the biggest anti-motive for volunteerism. Because volunteerism means "I want" but I also "I do". So, if you really want something, it's better to put your efforts to achieve what you want. This, in red letters, I'd say is probably the first mantra... from three basic, in my view, mantras that are typical of the person I call... "volunteer for tomorrow." This volunteer's "want" is a world that is better, more sustainable, more fair. His "do" can mean getting out of my comfort zone, out of my safety zone and taking risks. He is the volunteer-activist. I will tell you a personal experience, which I have never shared publicly. I will go back to my student years, around the late '80s, when I was studying at the Veterinary School of the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki. And I had to go, twice a week, to the city's slaughterhouses for a course on "Food Health." There were many things there that could make you feel uncomfortable, I will not mention them. But I will tell you what made me feel very uncomfortable. It was watching on a daily basis the brutal abuse of animals destined for slaughter. And the fact that everyone was totally apathetic about it. It was as if it was absolutely natural, and nobody cared about it. The fact that I wanted to do something about it was in my mind all the time. And one day I decided that I would look further into it. I will study the EU legislation for the operation of slaughterhouses. There was no Internet, Google etc. back then... so research was not as easy as you can imagine today. However, I found something that was very important. That apart from brutal, this handling was also illegal. I contacted an animal welfare company based in London that was also involved with Greece. And to make a long story short, I found myself travelling around Greece, at the slaughterhouses... taking photos, conducting interviews... writing a very thorough report on the illegal operation of the slaughterhouses. Of course, it wasn't allowed to go into the slaughterhouses and take photos like that. So I used my student status, I would have a miserable and very bored look... "You know, I have a paper for this professor." I also had three-four inconsequential questions, I posed them, they would answer. I say "Can I take a couple of photos, because they will not believe me and maybe they will have me do the paper again. To prove I was here." So when they opened the door, it was crazy. In the end, my name was nowhere to be seen, it never came out. But an article of mine with photos was published in a international magazine, and Greece was under a lot of pressure, some slaughterhouses shut down later, some conditions improved, maybe for that reason as well. In that activist debut of mine, as you understand, I went out of my comfort zone. And I took a risk. First of all, never to graduate, if they ever found out who I was. And I am sure that some professors in particular would never give me a passing grade. Or even get beaten up by some of the slaughterers, who I was taking pictures hitting animals with steel rods, on their way to being slaughtered. Sometimes, I think, that at that time, with no Internet, no social media, things were much simpler. Easier, probably, more specific. You would either do nothing or you would definitely do something. This in-between situation didn't exist. Not to be misunderstood, I consider the Internet and the social media an excellent tool for networking, for mobilization, for open communication, for all that it has offered. But there is a little catch, which I would like to underline. What is this catch? To sit behind my laptop, joining various causes that I consider to be quite important, liking some requests/quotes or use some myself, and post whatever I think constitutes my ideological and socio-political profile, and enjoy couch activism. Because if I remain on click-tivism, I will have done nothing from what a "volunteer for tomorrow" does, which is activism. Let's go and see the second mantra. "Give a man a fish and you will feed him once. Teach him to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime." Let me cut in here, that any quote in general that we don't know its source we say it's Chinese and we're in. So, do you know that one hundred kids will have died all over the world from hunger by the time I finish this talk? Do you also know that most of the times they will not have died because their mother and their father doesn't know how to fish or grow corps, but because someone deprives them of the right to do so. What millions of people around the world need right now is not someone to give them food, is not someone to teach them how to produce food. It's someone to stand next to them to claim their right to do so and to change the rules of the game. But how is this game played? What are the rules of today's game? I will tell you Mathilde's story. A small producer-farmer from Mozambique. Until recently she lived off farming her field. Twelve family members -- children and grandchildren. Today, she is in danger of starving to death, just like her whole family, just because some multinational firm grabbed her land to cultivate sugar cane for biodiesel. Mathilde is one of thousands of women experiencing this situation. What could we do, what could the volunteer for tomorrow do, for this Mathilde and the thousand other Mathildes? Make the volunteer an advocate. He will reclaim with her the right to get her land back, to cultivate it, and to reclaim it so that the multinational corporations cannot get their teeth on the land that was in people's hands. Right now, in the developing world, an area, areas five times as big as Greece are in this situation. The third mantra. "Thing globally, act locally." In my opinion, it is very outdated and very worn. Because, what is locally? Is it me? Is it my family? Is it my neighborhood? Is it my town? Is it my country? And when we know very well that the reasons of local problems are not just local, why should their solutions go through strict local actions? A volunteer for tomorrow thinks and acts globally. Just because for him local equals the whole world. Regardless of where he lives, whose municipality he's a citizen of, which country he's a national of, what the volunteer for tomorrow defines for himself is a global citizenship. The one of a citizen of the world. If we think about Mathilde's example, how restrictive would our action be if it was strictly local? The symptom that we are dealing with is local, or better said, individual, the hunger. But what is the cause? The cause is international. It's the policy of the European Union, that encourages and allows multinational firms to grab poor people's land. So if Mathilde's volunteer-advocate was restricted to a strictly local action, Mathilde, and the other Mathildes wouldn't be able to get out of this vicious circle of poverty and injustice. I consider that the crisis in Greece is a huge opportunity. And I don't have to add anything to this wonderful video and this great work that Human Grid shared with us earlier. But I want to point out a danger that lurks out there. And it is the undermining of our global citizenship. Not from initiatives like Human Grid but from other initiatives, some other underminers that find the opportunity, in the symptom that is called crisis, to create a new syndrome as an answer even more pathogenic, which is a syndrome of introversion, nationalism and xenophobia. I believe that if this racist quote "whoever is not Greek is a barbarian" dominates the way that we will look at solidarity towards our fellow man and volunteering, I am afraid that we will go back many years. The answer to all that is in this photograph. It is taken in Kenya, in Langovaya. An anhydrous region where forty HIV-positive people live. Those people were completely pushed aside some time ago with no access to anything. They lived in absolute poverty. But thanks to the support of Action Aid and forty Greek volunteers that traveled there, got out of their comfort and safety zones, and reclaimed with those people the access to be able to have the opportunity to cultivate the land, to have access to medicine and above all to have their voices heard, their lives have now changed. This community is called "Kulohiro" in the native language. And in their native language, "Kulohiro" means hope. For me, these forty HIV-positive people and these forty wonderful people that I've met through Action Aid make me very proud that I am working for this organization, but also for having met them. And for me they are my own "Kulohiro". Thank you. (Applause)