A big thank you to Kypseli Municipal Market for hosting our last community building event and to our children, staff, partners and friends who were all there to celebrate our fifth birthday, enjoy the holiday spirit and dance to the rhythms of DJ Nick Karpontinis, a generous contribution of PIXI and 369 AudioVisual. We are grateful to Rhea Kalo for her ceramic paintings' class, The Secret Garden for accommodating a Christmas wreath making workshop, to Easy Bake - Myloi Agiou Georgiou for providing recipe mixtures for our Christmas delights, to TSIMIS Printing & Packaging SA for snacks and Desmos NGO for covering the refreshments for the event. This day reminded us once again the importance of coexisting in a spirit of respect and community with each other as the only way to sustain healing environments of mutual trust for everyone.

Hanieh came as a lone Iranian 16-year old girl to one of our shelters four years ago where she found shelter, education and opportunities to build on her talents. Today, she is working with us as a caregiver at one of our shelters taking care of minor girls and minor mothers with their babies. She is also a licensed lifeguard and a positive role model for the rest of the children and youth of our community.

All children should be allowed to join their family and we work uninterruptedly to achieve that. One of the young boys under our care, Yousof from Afghanistan, reunited with his family in Düsseldorf. The tireless work of our legal team dedicated to every child, providing access to legal aid and representation, is an integral part of our child protection model.

We are grateful for our collaboration with Social Workers without Borders enabling us to have 12 social work students from Volda University College and Oslo Metropolitan University. They have become an integral part of our team helping us with daily activities in our shelters, while receiving continuous supervision and training by our child protection unit.

A key part of our mission is to create synergies that offer opportunities for the children we care to learn more about different cultures and history. A vivid example is our collaboration with the Jewish Museum of Greece for guided tours to children under our care.

One of the youngest children under our care participated at a Christmas concert at Serafio City of Athens along with over 100 young musicians as a member of the community music program for social inclusion El Sistema Greece celebrating and welcoming with optimism the coming year and all that it will bring.