With a personal experience, of course!

Just like with all my fundraising campaigns:  “Heating oil for the schools” or “Toilets for the elementary school”

December 2018

Shortly before Christmas I slipped on our stairs at night while barefoot. The pain in my left foot was like hell! Pantelis drove me across the island the next day in the middle of a rainstorm. After two hours of driving on the breakneck hairpin bends in thick fog and pouring rain, we finally reached the hospital in Agios Kyrikos. We were happy that the pass road was passable at all!

I was wheeled to the emergency room in a rickety, rusty wheelchair and immediately x-rayed. Unfortunately, there was no longer any X-ray film available, so the image could not be printed out and the orthopedic surgeon had to examine my foot on the computer. Two toes were broken.

“Night walker fracture” is what it’s called and it happens more often than you think, he said jokingly to cheer us up a bit. As already mentioned, it was just before Christmas and the rooms were freezing cold. But the care was all the warmer. Everyone in the emergency room was incredibly kind and concerned about us.

The doctor treated my foot and, after a long search, brought me a walking cast boot that appeared to have been used several times and looked somewhat damaged. “We were lucky again that we found one,” he laughed. He strapped it to me and told me to bring it back after six weeks. Well I thought, hopefully no one else breaks their foot by then…

February 2019

A few days ago I went to the hospital for a follow-up check and of course I returned the walking cast. I can’t say how happy I was for him and how much pain he saved me.

My foot is fine again now, but this experience of course gave me other thoughts…

I requested an audience with the hospital director. He’s young and full of good intentions, trying his best in an ailing system. There is a lack of so many things, he tells me. The employees are far too few and poorly paid. A problem that unfortunately I cannot help with my fundraising campaigns. But there are many other problems that our donations can alleviate and some that we can finance. I’ll give you some examples:

• Enough heating oil
• Hospital equipment
• Medical material
• Medication
• Instruments etc.

Practicing solidarity…

I agreed with the hospital director that we would not give monetary donations, only donations in kind, and that we would pay the delivery companies directly. This way we can ensure absolute transparency. Mind you, the hospital in Ikaria is so small and familiar, and so grateful for every kind of support, that I personally have absolutely no doubt that it will be treated honestly.

That’s what I call solidarity in practice. In small ways you can achieve more than you think!

Unfortunately, I can’t change the big world, even if I have some good ideas, but I can change my little world! And with it the world of others and others and others moves…

Just as water draws concentric circles when you throw a small stone into it… that is chaos theory: the smallest changes can have major effects on the entire system due to their non-linear dynamics.

Or the butterfly effect: If a butterfly moves its wings, according to the idea, it can use the resulting air vortex to trigger a larger one, which in turn can use its energy to start a hurricane… an unpredictable chain reaction.

There are now replicas of my fundraising campaigns from Germany and Belgium…

Our good example sets a precedent! It’s wonderful when you can show a path that others can then follow!

If you also feel solidarity and want to help, you can make a small donation to support my projects!

To the donation accounts…