Blog 10: More Children in Greece Are Going Hungry
In Athens children are no longer just playing, laughing, and
dreaming about their future. Recently children
are going through school trash cans for food and asking their peers for
leftovers.
A school principal in a working class suburb of Athens has
been confronting the hungry children’s parents, and some are humiliated and ashamed
but confess that they have not been able to find a job. One couple says their family is living on
rations of pasta and ketchup.
“’We have reached a point where children in Greece are
coming to school hungry. Today, families
have difficulties not only of employment, but of survival.’”
The Greek economy has been declining by 20% in the past five
years. The unemployment rate is more
than 27%; the highest unemployment rate in Europe. 6 out of 10 people have not worked in more
than a year. According to the article, “Those
dry statistics are reshaping the lives of Greek families with children, more of
whom are arriving at schools hungry or underfed, even malnourished, according
to private groups and the government itself.”
What is food insecurity?
The article explains food security is where people are facing hunger or
the threat of hunger. 10% of Greek
elementary and middle school children are suffering from food insecurity. Some people speculate that Greece has reached
a similar level of hunger as some African countries.
One problem in addition to high unemployment rates and a
declining economy is that Greek schools do not offer subsidized cafeteria
lunches. Instead, students are required
to pack their own lunch or buy food
items from the cafeteria. Considering
that families are already struggling to find jobs and have trouble finding
means to put food on their own tables, these cafeteria costs are overwhelming. The schools in the United States, in
contrast, has the benefit of “free lunch” offered to children from lower income
families.
There are also higher taxes being imposed upon larger
families, consequentially leading to more unemployed parents losing their
savings and benefits to these increased tax rates. In an economy where thousands of factory jobs
have been wiped out, children are suffering in this economic crisis. “’My sense is that in Greece, we are drowning
on dry land’”.
The article illustrates another scary statistic: 60 out of
280 Greek students suffer from malnutrition, and the worst part is this number
is rapidly increasing. This issue is
even being taken seriously by the government, which originally described the statistics
of malnutrition as an exaggeration. Now, the government has placed priority on
the concern of malnutrition in schools.
These issues of malnutrition and having an “economically weak
diet” have hit immigrants the hardest but have spread among Greeks in urban
areas where one or both parents are permanently unemployed. In rural areas people can grow their own food,
but this is not enough to eliminate the problem.
The only help schools are receiving are donations of lunches
from a public health group. This group,
known as Prolepsis, has already provided lunches for 34 schools, where more
than half of the 6,400 families had suffered from mild to severe hunger. With further funding provided to the program,
they were able to cover 20,000 children at 120 schools. Leaders from the education system and
religious leaders are doing what they can to provide care packages and organizing
food drives at school.
If the European Union does not
help soon, the education system in Greece fears their children will not make
it.
As we have learned all semester, many countries and areas
where poverty is highly concentrated, and the economy is decreasing, the lack
of education is staggering, the population is increasing, public health systems
are weak, we find that there are children digging through trash cans because
their parents cannot find jobs, and have trouble providing food for their
children. We take a lot for granted in
the United States. The fact that Greece
is being compared to African countries is a sad truth. It seems that the education system as a whole
internationally has a lot of problems to face and overcome. Whether they be too much standardized
testing, not enough recognition or education for teachers, lack of school
funding, language barriers which hinder the cultural learning experiences, loss
of jobs leading to an inability to afford to attend school, uneven and unfair
school systems which segregate based on gender, class, race, ethnicity, etc.,
or food insecurity, resulting from an economic crisis. All over the world we are learning that there
is much to be done within our educational systems, and everything is influenced
by the economy and how it functions in certain areas.
Jessica Hanley
4/19/13
4:46 p.m.
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