Athens To Aegina Poll Of The Day

As a grade school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But just recently he has actually seen something altogether different, something he believed was impossible in Greece: kids choosing through school wastebasket for food; clingy youngsters asking buddies for leftovers; and an 11-year-old kid, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with cravings discomforts.

" He had actually consumed almost absolutely nothing in the house," Mr. Nikas said, sitting in his cramped school workplace near the port of Piraeus, a working-class suburban area of Athens, as the sound of a jump rope skittered throughout the play area. He confronted Pantelis's moms and dads, who repented and embarrassed however admitted that they had not had the ability to discover work for months. Their savings were gone, and they were surviving on rations of pasta and catsup.

" Not in my wildest dreams would I expect to see the scenario we are in," Mr. Nikas stated. "We have reached a point where kids in Greece are coming to school starving. Today, households have problems not just of employment, however of survival."

The Greek economy is in totally free fall, having actually diminished by 20 percent in the previous five years. The joblessness rate is more than 27 percent, the highest in Europe, and 6 of 10 job applicants say they have actually not operated in more than a year. Those dry statistics are improving the lives of Greek households with children, more of whom are getting to schools starving or underfed, even malnourished, according to personal groups and the federal government itself.

In 2015, an estimated 10 percent of Greek elementary and middle school students suffered from what public health specialists call "food insecurity," suggesting they dealt with cravings or the threat of it, said Dr. Athena Linos, a professor at the University of Athens Medical School who also heads a food help program at Prolepsis, a nongovernmental public health group that has studied the situation. "When it concerns food insecurity, Greece has actually now been up to the level of some African nations," she said.

Unlike those in the United States, Greek schools do not provide subsidized snack bar lunches. Trainees bring their own food or purchase products from a canteen. The expense has actually ended up being overwhelming for some households with little or no earnings. Their troubles have been compounded by brand-new austerity steps demanded by Greece's creditors, consisting of higher electrical power taxes and cuts in aids for large households. As a result, moms and dads without work are seeing their cost savings and advantages quickly disappear.

" All around me I hear kids saying: 'My moms and dads do not have any money. We do not understand what we are going to do,'" said Evangelia Karakaxa, a vivacious 15-year-old at the No. 9 junior high school in Acharnes.

Acharnes, a working-class town among the mountains of Attica, was dynamic with activity from imports till the economic crisis wiped out thousands of factory jobs.

Now, numerous of athens to delphi Evangelia's schoolmates are often starving, she stated, and one young boy just recently fainted. Some kids were beginning to take for food, she included. While she does not excuse it, she comprehends their predicament. "Those who are well fed will never ever understand those who are not," she stated.

" Our dreams are crushed," added Evangelia, whose moms and dads are unemployed but who is not in the same alarming situation as her peers. She paused, then continued in a low voice. "They say that when you drown, your life flashes prior to your eyes. My sense is that in Greece, we are drowning on dry land."

Alexandra Perri, who operates at the school, stated that a minimum of 60 of the 280 trainees suffered from malnutrition. Children who once took pride in sweets and meat now talk of consuming boiled macaroni, lentils, rice or potatoes. "The least expensive things," Ms. Perri said.

This year the number of poor nutrition cases leapt. "A year back, it wasn't like this," Ms. Perri, said, fighting back tears. "What's frightening is the speed at which it is happening."

The federal government, which at first dismissed the reports as exaggerations, just recently acknowledged that it required to tackle the concern of poor nutrition in schools. However with concerns placed on repaying bailout funds, there is little cash in Greek coffers to cope.

Mr. Nikas, the principal, said he understood that the Greek federal government was laboring to repair the economy. Now that talk of Greece's leaving the euro zone has vanished, things look much better to the outdoors world. "But inform that to the household of Pantelis," he stated. "They don't feel the improvement in their lives."

In the household's dark apartment near the school, Themelina Petrakis, Pantelis's mom, opened her refrigerator and cabinets one current weekend. Inside was little more than a few bottles of catsup and other condiments, some macaroni and leftovers from a meal she had received from the town hall.

The household was doing well and was even helping others in need until in 2015. The Petrakises were able to pay for a spacious house with a flat-screen TV and a PlayStation.

Then her partner, Michalis, 41, was laid off from his shipping job in December. He stated the company had not paid his salaries for 5 months before that. The couple might no longer manage rent, and by February they had actually lacked money.

" When the principal called, I needed to inform him, 'We do not have food,'" stated Ms. Petrakis, 36, cradling Pantelis's head as he cast his eyes to the ground.

Mr. Petrakis said he felt emasculated after repeatedly failing to discover brand-new work. When food for the household ran low, he stopped consuming practically totally, and rapidly slimmed down.

" When I was working last summer, I even discarded excess bread," he stated, tears streaming down his face. "Now, I sit here with a war going through my head, trying to determine how we will live."

When the cravings comes, Ms. Petrakis has an option. "It's simple," she said. "You get starving, you get dizzy and you sleep it off."

A 2012 Unicef report revealed that among the poorest Greek homes with kids, more than 26 percent had an "economically weak diet plan." The phenomenon has hit immigrants hardest however is spreading out quickly among Greeks in city locations where one or both moms and dads are efficiently permanently out of work.

In backwoods, individuals can a minimum of grow food. However that is insufficient to eliminate the problem. An hour's drive northwest of Athens, in the commercial town of Asproprigos, Nicos Tsoufar, 42, stared vacantly ahead as he beinged in the intermediate school that his 3 children participate in. The school receives lunches from a program run by Prolepsis, the general public health group. Mr. Tsoufar said his children frantically needed the meals.

He has not discovered work for 3 years. Now, he said, his household is living on what he called a "cabbage-based diet plan," which it supplements by foraging for snails in close-by fields. "I understand you can't cover nutritional essentials with cabbage," he said bitterly. "However there's no option."

The government and groups like Prolepsis are doing what they can. In 2015, Prolepsis began a pilot program providing a sandwich, fruit and milk at 34 public schools where majority of the 6,400 families getting involved said they had actually experienced "medium to major appetite."

After the program, that portion dropped to 41 percent. Funded by an $8 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, a global humanitarian company, the program was expanded this year to cover 20,000 children at 120 schools.

Konstantinos Arvanitopoulos, Greece's education minister, said the government had secured European Union financing to supply fruit and milk in schools, and vouchers for bread and cheese. It is likewise dealing with the Greek Orthodox Church to provide countless care plans. "It is the least we can do in this challenging financial situation," he said.

Mr. Nikas, the principal at 11-year-old Pantelis's school, has taken matters into his own hands and is organizing food drives at the school. He is angry at what he sees as wider neglect of Greece's problems by Europe.

" I'm not stating we should just wait for others to assist us," he said. "But unless the European Union imitates this school, where households help other families since we're one huge family, we're provided for."