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Martina Filella is a social service graduate and specialized in work with minors, families, and communities. She was European Solidarity Corps volunteer at the YC Epirus for several months in 2024, her volunteer work carried out consisted of implementing non-formal education activities in a facility for unaccompanied foreign minors, and production of digital content on the topic of asylum seekers. She also supported the Erasmus+ training course CIRI Vol3, hosted by the YC Epirus organisation, and this is where she learned about rites of passage as a traditional tool for supporting young people coming of age. It inspired her to research the subject and to create a toolkit with activities tailored to youth workers that provide care, educational, and developmental activities for young asylum seekers.

The toolkit is intended as a useful tool for the practical deepening of the topic of rites of passage with minors, especially in the context of minors being asylum seekers. It consists of an initial theoretical part with some examples of rites of passage, a subsequent part in which you will find useful ice-breaking activities, getting-to-know-each-other activities, introductory activities, and a final part of more focused activities on rites of passage designed to explore their characterising elements and meanings. 

Eloise worked closely with a group of young asylum seekers in Ioannina for several months, to develop this unique collection of analogue photography, reflecting life of those youngsters. She shares about this collection:

""My Reality" is a participatory photography project designed to give teenagers the opportunity to freely express their thoughts and feelings through analogue photography and storytelling. The teenagers were given analogue cameras and asked to capture moments from their lives - their daily routines, places they like, memories, dreams, anxieties, thoughts, or feelings. Here, photography becomes a powerful storytelling tool, where behind each image is a story."

During his several months of ESC activity, Hasan worked together with a teenager from Congo to develop a song. The collaborated on creation of the music and the lyrics, and the final result is a bi-lingual song called Bloodshot, and a practical guide of step suggestions on how to become a beginner songwriter. 

After working on this song, Hasan planned and hosted a local event for young adults, where they could explore becoming a songwriter, attempting to reveal the sense of art in every person. Participants of the workshop learned about the lengthy process of the Bloodshot song creation, and practised various elements of musical expression. 

A series of short interviews, called "People on the Move", was created by European solidarity Corps volunteer Marco, who worked several months on this idea. He met young asylum seekers at the facility of unaccompanied minors, where he provided educational activities to the youngsters. He explains about his project and process:

"People on the Move is composed of three short interviews conducted with three unaccompanied minors guests of the Agios Athanasios facility in Perama (Ioannina, Epirus, Greece).

The interviews are about those feelings that fill and shape the most delicate, decisive and profound form of people, which are love, forgiveness, care, dreams and loneliness. I hope this will be a cue for them to reflect on what makes life beautiful. Around the children's words, the barbed wire that is gradually dissolving, is my trust in the temperament that brought them here and that will set them free on radiant paths."

Nisha was European Solidarity Corps volunteer at the YC Epirus organisation, in Ioannina, during the summer of 2024. She was mainly working with young asylum seekers, providing non-formal educational activities at facility of unaccompanied minors. She shares: 

"I got inspired to create this project just a few days after going to the facility. The facility is a place of hopes and dreams. The teenagers that arrive are usually excited to have reached the facility while those who have been there for some time seek to move on with their lives. All of the teenagers are dreaming about their future. Dreams can go beyond reality but simultaneously are only limited by reality. By depicting their future day as a cartoon, I make use of the concept of“speaking into existence". In my personal project, I asked two teenagers residing in the facility of unaccompanied minors in Perama, Greece if they could share their dreams with me. They were able to keep the dream close to reality use their imagination and go beyond. Then, I depicted their typical future dream day as a cartoon."

Enjoy meeting these dreams!

Enis worked for more than a month to create a song, together with teenager asylum seekers in Ioannina. Enis writes:

"In this social responsibility project, my aim was to transform the emotions, experiences, and hopes of asylum-seeking teenagers into music. At the heart of the project was the creation of a song that would come to life through the poetic expressions of these young individuals. I worked closely with them, guiding them to write poems, and I bore witness to the emotions that poured from their pens.

I sought to use the unifying power of music to foster understanding and empathy for the challenges faced by asylum-seeking teenagers. One of the most important elements of the project was to give them the opportunity to express themselves and to have their voices heard by a broader audience." 

During several months, European Solidarity Corps volunteers Dani and Clark worked on a magazine that explains the context and current issues related to asylum seekers fleeing conflict areas and coming to Greece. Their work was mainly influenced by the discovered reality while working with young asylum seekers in Ioannina. Greece. They write:

"Refugees get ripped away from everything they know; their homes, their friends, their family. War, violence, or just not feeling safe forces them to pack up and head to Greece, looking for a safe place to start a new and better life. But things aren't always sunshine and rainbows when they get there. This magazine is all about giving refugees a voice and understanding what is really happening behind the migration crisis. We want to tell their stories, the good but also the bad. We also want to shine a light on the challenges they face every single day in Greece. This magazine is about building bridges and as the title says; open new united horizons, creating connections, and making sure refugees feel welcome, not forgotten. Come and join us, during these pages you will discover some of the problems that refugees face when trying to start a new life in Greece."

"The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein."