No way, Jose.
Excitement rises to fever pitch as a creamy chocolate gateau is sliced. It appears a timeless, idyllic scene – but in reality it is a very modern Greek tragedy.
For this cloistered red-brick building in a wealthy suburb of Athens is a children’s home. Yet many of those youngsters are not orphans or the products of dysfunctional families.
Instead, they are forgotten victims of the Eurozone crisis, handed over by parents who can no longer afford to feed them.
The financial meltdown in Greece has caused pain and suffering throughout the country. But in a nation where the idea of family is central to everyday life, its youngest citizens are bearing some of the heaviest burdens of the crisis.
Scores of children have been put in orphanages and care homes for economic reasons; one charity said 80 of the 100 children in its residential centres were there because their families can no longer provide for them.
Ten per cent of Greek children are said to be at risk of hunger. Teachers talk of cancelling PE lessons because children are underfed and of seeing pupils pick through bins for food.
At the Zanneio Child Care Institution, I was proffered a piece of cake by nine-year-old Nicolas Eleftheriadou. When I asked him how he was, he replied with a shy grin: ‘I’m as tough as a walnut.’
His parents, Olga and Alexandros, had arrived to take their three oldest children home for the weekend; the children attend the unit from Monday to Friday. The friendly couple both lost jobs in catering two years ago; he delivered pizzas, she worked in a sandwich shop.
More @ Mail Online
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