PUBLISHED: 23:27, 22 June 2013 | UPDATED: 02:04,
23 June 2013
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Isaiah 58:5ff
5
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 ‘Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter –
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: here am I.
‘If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
13 ‘If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the Lord’s holy day honourable,
and if you honour it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
14 then you will find your joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.’
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Laughing children play in a pine-scented
courtyard on a warm summer’s evening.
Excitement rises to fever pitch as a
creamy chocolate gateau is sliced. It appears a timeless, idyllic scene – but
in reality it is a very modern Greek tragedy.
For this cloistered red-brick building
in a wealthy suburb of Athens is a children’s home. Yet many of those
youngsters are not orphans or the products of dysfunctional families.
Desperate: Alexandros and Olga
Eleftheriadou visiting their children Nicholas and Victoria at the Zanneio
Child Care Institution
Instead, they are forgotten victims of
the Eurozone crisis, handed over by parents who can no longer afford to feed
them.
The financial meltdown in Greece has
caused pain and suffering throughout the country. But in a nation where the
idea of family is central to everyday life, its youngest citizens are bearing
some of the heaviest burdens of the crisis.
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Scores of children have been put in
orphanages and care homes for economic reasons; one charity said 80 of the 100
children in its residential centres were there because their families can no
longer provide for them.
Ten per cent of Greek children are said
to be at risk of hunger. Teachers talk of cancelling PE lessons because
children are underfed and of seeing pupils pick through bins for food.
At the Zanneio Child Care Institution,
I was proffered a piece of cake by nine-year-old Nicolas Eleftheriadou. When I
asked him how he was, he replied with a shy grin: ‘I’m as tough as a walnut.’
His parents, Olga and Alexandros, had
arrived to take their three oldest children home for the weekend; the children
attend the unit from Monday to Friday. The friendly couple both lost jobs in
catering two years ago; he delivered pizzas, she worked in a sandwich shop.
Tough decisions: Alexandros and Olga
Eleftheriadou can no longer afford to feed their children after the Eurozone
crisis
With five children, they struggled to
survive on social security of £400 a month, boosted by odd jobs in the black
economy. They want proper work, but there are few jobs.
Olga’s widowed mother tried to protect
the family, providing food and funds from her own meagre benefits as a cancer
patient. Sadly, it was not enough – and so for more than a year Nicolas, his
eight-year-old brother and seven-year-old sister have been sent to Zanneio, an
hour from their home on the other side of Athens.
The couple admitted it was incredibly
painful. ‘It was so hard, incredibly hard, especially at the start,’ Olga says.
‘I could hardly bear it. The children have got used to it. The one consolation
is they seem happier now and their teachers are very kind and caring.’
The Eleftheriadous’ story highlights
the harshness of life in modern Greece, where the economy is in freefall – it
is still shrinking at five per cent a year – and the unemployment rate is the
highest in Europe.
Almost a third of adults are jobless,
along with two-thirds of under-25s. But even those in work struggle. Private
sector wages have fallen by 30 per cent in four years and painful new taxes
have been imposed as the country is crucified by its adherence to the euro.
In the few days I was in Athens, Greece
was demoted by the financial markets from ‘developed nation’ to ‘emerging
market’ status, a human rights group condemned the appalling scapegoating of
migrants and the state broadcaster ERT was switched off by the government to
cut costs.
The closure of ERT shocked Greeks and
reminded outsiders of the scale of the country’s crisis. The move shattered
the fragile three-party governing coalition with the smallest pulling out
– and could force the third general election in just over a year.
Strain: Olga Eleftheriadou holding two
of her five children, who live at the home from Monday to Friday
Under the EU-imposed austerity
programme, Greece must lose 150,000 of its 800,000 public sector jobs, many the
product of political patronage and a key cause – alongside rampant tax evasion
– of the huge debts dragging down this nation of 11 million.
Such is the scale of the crisis that
Greece’s economic contraction is already twice as deep as Britain’s during the
Great Depression of the 1930s.
Little wonder staff at Zanneio – which
sits amid the beautiful villas of film stars, financiers and even a former
prime minister – have seen so many heartbreaking cases.
One family was forced to put four
children aged between six and 14 in the home after the father’s restaurant went
bust with such big debts he was jailed under hardline new laws and their mother
was unable to cope.
An angelic-looking 11-year-old girl
told me how much she looked forward to seeing her mother each Friday. Her
father was dead, her mother unemployed and unable to afford her upkeep; she had
been there two years already. Such cases upset those involved in childcare. ‘It
is not in the Greek culture for families to split up,’ said Menelaos Tsaoussis,
45, the foundation’s former director. ‘These situations are so traumatic
for the families.’
Another charity last year reported four
children, including a newborn baby, dumped on its doorstep. One toddler was
found holding a note saying: ‘I will not be coming to pick up Anna today
because I cannot afford to look after her. Please take good care of her.
Sorry.’
The Child’s Smile, a Greek charity for
families in crisis, said it helped 10,927 children last year with emergency
supplies of food, clothes, shoes, school books and psychological support. The
previous year, the number was 4,465.
‘We used to have people only from the
lowest economic level but now we are seeing people from upper middle levels
when they lose their jobs and have nowhere to go,’ said Tania Schiza, a social
worker with the group.
Often these ‘new poor’ are reluctant to
seek support, worsening their plight.
Staying cheerful: Nine-year-old
Nicholas with the other children running to the backyard of the orphanage
‘We have some cases where families who
used to donate money have become victims of the crisis.
‘Now they come to us for help,’ said Schiza.
‘All of these families are deeply
disappointed. They feel whatever they do, nothing can be done to change their
circumstances in the crisis.’
Other charities told similar stories.
SOS Children’s Villages helped 47 families five years ago; today it is helping
900 and opening new centres across Greece to stave off family breakdown amid
soaring poverty.
Many turning to them are from formerly
prosperous middle-class families; among the restaurant owners, shopkeepers and
businessmen was one senior executive with a major company who had lost his job.
Like all such groups, it strives to
keep families together. Despite this, with financial pressures growing more
intense by the day as savings dwindle and firms collapse, a handful of children
in its homes have been given up by impoverished parents.
Threat: Eight-year-old Vallia Georgitsi's mother Metaxia is struggling
to cope
‘This is a major shift in Greek society
over the past three years,’ said Pavlos Salihos, a teacher and trained
psychologist at the children’s village in Vari. ‘We never had cases like this
before; it was just social problems such as drug abuse.’
Another official with SOS Children’s
Villages said some youngsters were in such bad shape they could barely talk.
One school said one in six of its students suffered malnutrition. In others
teachers have started handing out fruit, sandwiches and milk. A public health
body believes food security levels in Greece have fallen to those of some
African countries. Social workers said they look out for children who simply
give up on school work, the first sign of mental trauma caused by the crisis.
Suicide rates and mental health
problems across all ages have risen sharply over the past three years; on my
previous visit, I came across a woman who had lost her job and was threatening
to jump from her office. One newspaper has said Greece was a ‘society on the
verge of a nervous breakdown’.
Ironically, the image has grown of
Greeks as feckless and lazy, although studies have found more entrepreneurs per
head and longer working hours than elsewhere in Europe.
But to make matters worse, as demand
soars from desperate parents, the maelstrom that has engulfed Greece is making
it harder for cash-strapped charities to keep such centres open.
On Friday, the day I visited, the
foundation that runs Zanneio was marking its closure and merger with another
group; the buildings have been bought by the church for training priests.
Although its 19th Century founders
endowed it with dozens of properties, the foundation’s rental income fell in
the financial crisis from £1.3 million to £850,000, while new taxes imposed by a government scrabbling around for
funds took an extra £300,000 a year.
The centre has been taken over by
Hatzikonsta – the oldest children’s welfare organisation in Greece, founded by
a family of wealthy traders 160 years ago. Hatzikonsta has already seen the
number of children it is supporting rise more than four-fold since the crisis
began – and four-fifths of children in its residential care are there for
economic reasons.
Yet it, too, is struggling to survive.
It is owed more than £850,000 from property rentals; already its 72 staff have
taken substantial salary cuts. ‘I feel I must have been Genghis Khan in a
previous life for such punishment,’ joked Leonidas Dragoumanos, the director trying
to juggle the finances.
Metaxia Georgitsi, 40, a single mother
of three, put her oldest child – a 14-year-old boy – in full-time care after
seeing her income from cleaning work fall by nearly two-thirds, then losing her
job and trying to survive on benefits of £300 a month.
‘We both cried every day to begin
with,’ she said. ‘I tried to visit him every day, which made it a bit better,
but it was hard.
‘Without a husband, what else could I
do – we had no option.
‘It was very difficult – I had loans to
pay and did not have enough money for food. But at least they helped him with
his homework there and he ate properly.’
After one year, the family was reunited
last autumn when the boy came home. But now her unemployment benefits are due
to stop after a year without work and she may have to rent out her home, which
she retains only because her elderly parents pay the mortgage.
Special report: Ian Birrell went to
Athens where he heard middle-class families' concerns that they could not look
after themselves
‘I just don’t know what I can do in the
future,’ said Metaxia, who believes single-parent families have been hit
especially hard. ‘The crisis has undone us. I fear I may have to put my boy
back in the orphanage, send my girls to live with my mother and I will stay
with a friend. Then the family will be completely split up. It’s the worst
possible scenario.’
Amid the soup kitchens, shut-down shops
and scavengers on the streets, there is one sliver of good to emerge from this
Greek catastrophe: the rediscovery of self-help and communal values as the
welfare state is gutted and people pull together.
In Marousi, a suburb of Athens that has
had a 70 per cent cut in state funding, mayor Giorgos Patoulis has led a drive
to open a health centre treating 6,000 uninsured patients, food kitchens,
clothing banks and even a pharmacy staffed by volunteers and stocked with
donations.
‘The mentality had to change and there
are signs of a new solidarity,’ he said. ‘But if this crisis extends much
further, how will we be able to take care of all our people?’
It is a question many more Greeks are
asking, especially those thousands of parents teetering on the edge of the
abyss. Most would echo the words of Amalia Ntougia, 46, a widowed mother of
three from Marousi whose shop closed in the crisis. Although living off
handouts and crumbs from her disabled father’s small pension, when asked if she
would give up her children to a care home, she replied indignantly: ‘No, I am a
Greek mother.’
Tragically, for many Greek parents,
even such intense family pride is no longer enough.
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