"The Other Human" is an action of solidarity and a manifestation of love towards our fellowmen, with the hope to awaken consciousness and for there to be other similar actions from others and from groups. Greece is teeming with social cooperatives and grassroots initiatives that have grown up out of the crisis in the last few years. When I arrived in Athens I had decided to seek out a few of these projects and see how ordinary Greeks were finding innovative solutions to serious economic and social problems.
I came across one such group, O Allos Anthropos (The Other Human) in one of Athens' squares and was invited to see more the next day in a different part of the city. Well, when I arrived I think I counted more journalists and photographers than people waiting to have dinner. I suddenly felt uncomfortable being another big fat lens sticking into someone's stew. But I was there to discover what they were up to so when Kostos Polychronopoulos, the founder of the initiative, offered me a pair of disposable gloves to start cutting the bread, I took him up on it. It was meant to be a series of photos showing the story of this small group of people arrive with all their equipment; stove, table, utensils, food, in bundled into a supermarket trolley. I ended up helping them prepare and serve what turned out to be a delicious pasta in tomato sauce with parmesan cheese. Piping hot, but in this heat, it got the sweat glands doing their job. A remarkably simple, yet effective initiative. As Elena, one of the volunteers said, "this is for people who cannot buy food but it is also for people who are just lonely." |
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