In the framework of the “Care for the Third Age” program, the distribution of vouchers to 50 beneficiaries took place with a speech that moved the whole audience while giving a life lesson.
Volunteer of the organization Lefteris Eleftheriadis was invited to speak about the unique experience he had in 2012 when he visited Rwanda, Africa and helped to build a school with his hands. For several years, Mr Eleftheriadis had fostered two young children from Ghana through an ActionAid project. In 2012, he was selected by the organisation as part of a team of volunteers to visit Rwanda and help with whatever means he had to help the inhabitants meet some of their basic livelihood needs, such as water, food and shelter. After two days of travel and after medical check-ups, Mr Eleftheriadis described in a very vivid way the extent of the difficulty of the manual labour he had to perform together with the locals and young children, travelling tens of kilometres every day to carry bulky materials and water. “In Africa nothing is self-evident, to drink water you have to walk a mile and a half to fill bottles and return back.
Our expedition drank bottled water, I won’t forget this, every time we drank water and threw away the bottle the little kids would take the bottle to use as a means of storage. Also the children there don’t have toys, so I remembered when I was a kid making homemade cars and with simple materials like wire and wood I taught them to make carts.” His story was accompanied by a video and photo projection to make it understandable to the participants. The aim of the activity was to inspire the elderly people not to stop setting goals in their lives by taking an example from the speaker’s life. Afterwards, the beneficiaries received the voucher of 60 euros in order to buy essentials.
The “Care for the Elderly IV” project involves the monthly provision of vouchers for the purchase of food and basic necessities for elderly people over sixty years of age and the organisation of talks in the context of the distribution on topics relating to the elderly. It is financed entirely by the TIMA Public Benefit Foundation.