Shared notions of solidarity from Komotini in Greece and Barcelona

Komotini – Independent Living Training Center for People with Disabilities (KEADA*)

The Association “PERPATO” was founded in 2002 in the city of Komotini with the goal to organise and educate people with kinetic impairments to improve their living conditions and transform Komotini into a completely accessible living environment.

In 2012 “PERPATO” founded the Training Center for Autonomous Living of Persons with Disabilities in a building owned by the Municipality of Komotini. The center provides training services to 21 beneficiaries with mobility disabilities in order for them to participate autonomously in as many areas of life as possible.

Barcelona – How are you?

How do older people in the city feel in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic? To answer this question, the “How are you?” project was launched. The initiative involved 70,000 calls to people between the ages of 70 and 84 who were not users of any municipal service to find out first-hand about their emotional state, identify possible situations of loneliness or emotional suffering and inform them about support resources. In cases where the need was detected, the regular call protocol was activated by a specialised psychological service. “How are you?” made it possible to attend to and accompany the city’s elderly to alleviate, above all, the loneliness, sadness and grief caused by the pandemic, and also to extend the reach of municipal services.

Komotini – Ecology Group of Rodop

This is the slogan of Ecology Group of Rodopi, of which we are members and which has been active since 1990. For the past 22 years, apart from the environmental issues that concern us (composting, recycling, environmental protection, wild animals treatment etc), we have been successfully active in our campaign against gold extraction and mining that is going on in our region through ongoing struggles.

Barcelona – We protect the schools

Protecting schools aims to open up the city to children to care for their physical, emotional and cognitive development. Barcelona is transforming the areas around schools to free them from traffic, noise, fumes and pollution, and to expand and improve public space with new green and community spaces. Since its launch in 2020, Barcelona’s children have already gained more than a hundred spaces in which to play and learn in safety and breathe clean air.

Komotini – Santa RUN

The 2008 crisis left a lot of our co-citizens in need. In 2012 volunteers with the slogan “Santa is late” invited the whole city into a game of care. A game aimed at collecting food provisions, where solidarity for our fellow human beings was the winner!

Through this initiative, the organizers of the action were able to bring together, local authorities, businesses, cultural and sports clubs, conveying the message that people in vulnerable situations around us need our support throughout the year.

With covid-19 pandemic the main goal is that people’s needs are not in “lockdown” and we have to find  new ways to help.

Barcelona – Community Kitchens

The community kitchens of the Alimenta Project are spaces that promote access to decent, sustainable and healthy food for people in vulnerable situations. They are open to citizens to cook, eat, cultivate, establish social links, educate themselves and find guidance in the field of employment. Their aim is to promote a new model of social care that overcomes welfare, de-stigmatizes situations of economic or housing poverty and encourages local consumption, personal autonomy and self-organisation in food purchasing, such as collective purchasing.