Meeting our global volunteers team in Crete

Pat, Charlotte,Rose, Annee, Jackie and me

Nicki and Annee


Charlotte

Country Manager, Sam, and Willie

(Peter took all these picture so that's why he is missing!)

Meeting our Global Volunteers Team

I had wanted to do another Global Volunteers program since I went to Lima Peru for the organization in 2008. Global Volunteers is a non-profit volunteer organization, based in Minnesota, that has been offering volunteer vacation opportunities around the world for over 25 years: http://www.globalvolunteers.org/.

I believe it to be a well-run organization and I was quite happy with my Peruvian experience. I told Peter and our children that my college graduation present to each of them would be a Global Volunteers trip to wherever they choose. Peter got his diploma last May (after 37 years) so he is the first take me up on the offer. We chose Greece because it fit into my plans to go to Italy and we wanted to go somewhere warmer and greener than Minnesota in March. …and Crete looked fascinating and beautiful.

The team gathered on Sunday at the Hotel Handakas and made introductions: Sam Pinakoulaki is our County Manager and leader. Sam is a Brit who came to Crete 20 years ago while in a touring dance troupe. She stayed in Crete, married, learned Greek and produced five children, which has endeared her to her mother-in-law. She has fully adapted to the Greek way of life and is very well connected in the community. Our fellow volunteers hailed from all corners of the U.S., overwhelmingly female and over 60, with the exception of Nicki and Willy, a 40-something couple from Portland Oregon. So Peter wasn’t the only guy, at least for the first week and, while he and I were in between age-wise, our older fellow volunteers were definitely young-at-heart. Pat, a retired accountant from Memphis, is into month two of a fourth month sojourn that started in India and will conclude in South Africa via Egypt. Charlotte is a spry octogenarian from Ohio who has done countless volunteer projects all over the world, including working with Orangutans in Borneo. Rose, from Colorado, was the team’s water nymph, swimming almost daily in the still frigid Aegean Sea. Annee and Jackie were from New England (Maine and Boston) and were travelling together for the first time even though they had been friends for years.
Sam explained that our project for the next two weeks would be to work with mentally handicapped adults, ages 18-50 plus, at St. Spiros, a school up in the mountains about a half hour’s drive from our hotel. This had been rather hastily put together as a result of the ongoing teacher’s strikes, which made teaching English in the primary schools impossible. A University of Minnesota group had been at St. Spiros the week before us so Sam already had a good idea of the program and what would be expected of us. I would say Greece is about 50 years behind the U.S. (or at least Minnesota) when it comes to cultural acceptance of and support for those with disabilities. The physically and mentally disabled are not seen in public and are expected to be cared for by their families –out of sight, out of mind. There is no streamlining of the disabled into the schools or specialized job training, even though several of the people we worked with could have been fully employed with some support. The group at St. Spiros takes a rickety bus up to mountains every morning and works on craft projects that they then sell to keep the center going. Support for the center comes from a patchwork of sources, mainly private… very little from the government. Our task would be to help the overworked staff and participants with their crafts and with physical activity as the participants are all too sedentary.

Our list of team objectives in place, we are ready to meet our charges on Monday morning.