Time for your daily "Two Minutes of Compassion"

[GliderGuider]

AE for Athens Fund 2nd Donation: The Man Who Cooks In The Street

Kostas lost his job as a marketing specialist in a big firm in Athens early on when the financial crisis broke. Gradually, he had no choice but to move back in with his mother and was forced to share her ever more meagre pension. He must have been close to 45 at the time, he’s 50 now.

Then one day in 2011, as he tells it, he saw two kids fighting over some food they found in a dumpster (yes, that is Athens, even back then). The next day, he decided to go to a farmer’s market and ask the stall keepers for leftover food. Right then and there, he started to cook a meal with what they gave him, and to give it away to anyone who wanted to eat, to share.



These days, he feeds over 300 people every day. Athens is the city of homeless people. And they’re not winos or people with mental issues, as we know from North American and European cities, though some of them inevitably are.

In Athens, they’re the people who not long ago had good jobs and good prospects, and often families to raise, and who now find themselves with nothing left. Many many people have moved (back) in with parents or family or friends, but not all have that choice. And even if they do, there is no future anywhere to be seen.

Today, these are the people that Kostas can count on to be his volunteers. He now has 3 crews cooking meals outside, in squares and streets, every day in various places in the city. There are a few spots where he’ll be every Tuesday, or every Thursday, but the rest are all different places all the time. Because the need is everywhere.

The web site has a donation button...

[pscot]

1. kick

[FlatBaroque]

2. K

[Ghost Dog]

3. I'm shocked. Such untaxed economic activity must be stopped!

Or at least 26% VAT charged on each transaction and sent atraight away to Greece's poor creditors!

(In fact, I'm told, recycling in this way otherwise wasted food from, say, tourist establishments is in itself illegal here in Spain, taxed or not (although the subsidised and untaxed Catholic Church seems to sometimes get away with it). That's Germanic austerity (as applied outside Germany) for you).