SYNDESMOS General Secretariat opens in Athens, Greece

Rebecca Hookway

ATHENS, GREECE - Some say that moving adds gray hairs to one's head. While the transfer of the SYNDESMOS General Secretariat from Bialystok, Poland to Athens, Greece was no easy task, it did mark the start of a new erain SYNDESMOS' history.
Weeks before the move, the contents of the office in Poland were into more than 80 boxes, crossed Europe via Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and reemerged from the back of a truck in sunny Athens, ready to greet the spring in a new environ-ment.
And new it was - the contrasts were already apparent as Bialystok receded into the past and Athens became the present and foreseeable future.
For sure, transferring an office is not without its complications, if one is to ensure that members and contacts are not kept out of touch for too long and that the valuable material arrives safely, speedily and at a low cost. I wonder if you can guess what is the total area cubed of the Secretariat's fixed assets? They totaled nearly twenty meters cubed, far more than our estimations had allowed for, and too much for the van to take on the foreseen date.
So, for a full week following the proposed departure date, the contents of the SYNDESMOS General Secretariat, duly packed and positioned in the storage shed of the moving company, sat undisturbed until finally the move got underway. Meanwhile, we waited patiently, frustrated but full of anticipation, for the late arrival of the materials. We suspected that the real challenges and exhilarating moments had only just begun.
When the crates containing our materials finally arrived, we began to wonder at how SYNDESMOS had accumulated such an array of hardware, books, photographs, mementos, files and archive material. As we untangled countless computer wires and set up a working system for our three computers, we reflected on how SYNDESMOS would manage, over the years, to maintain this tradition of moving its Secretariat every time a new staff is acquired.
With a growing quantity of assets, frequent moves become increasingly difficult; gone are the 1980s, when the inventory of the office amounted to no more than a computer and a set of files transport able in the back of a car.
Whenever we are visited by a newcomer to the office, their pleasing comments about the surroundings, both inside and outside, remind us of those early weeks in March and April, during which we got our systems up and running. We thank the Missionary foundation Simantro" and its president, Mr. Nikos Fetokakis, for kindly making it possible for the Secretariat to have its offices fee of charge in Holargos, one of the nicest areas of Athens. The Secretariat boasts two offices with a small kitchen and bathroom and balconies at both ends. It provides a perfect working environment: peaceful, breezy and pleasing to the eye. The pleasant surroundings made the initial, if frequent, frustrations of malfunctioning equipment and lack of Greek language easier to bear. One of our computers and our photocopier had evidently not enjoyed the week in the back of a van and continued to cause us problems for weeks. Our internet and e-mail access remained too sporadic for efficiency until after a few months had passed, and the introduction of a PC in an office which other-wise functions with Apple Macintoshes also had its good and bad side. However, we hopethat the growing pains, inevitable at the start of any new endeavour, do not distract us from our focus: keeping Christ at the center of our lives and building on our shared responsibilities towards Orthodox Christian youth and their informed contact with other Christians.
It was only after the office was finally blessed with holy water on 4 July 2000 that we began to finally settle in to our new environment. There was sweet irony in the fact His Eminence, Metropolitan Efthimios of Achelos, SYNDESMOS Secretary-General from 1956 until 1964, honoured us by accepting the invitation to perform the ceremony. In blessing the
offices, he also was blessing the very archive material dating from the time when he played a major role in SYNDESMOS, thereby making the past significant in the present. Attended by about 20 friends of SYNDESMOS from Greece, Jordan, Poland, Ukraine, Albania and elsewhere, the blessing ceremony was the fitting inau-guration to the start of our real work. Thank you, your Eminence, for your continued involvement!
Six projects were due to take place within the six weeks following the office blessing, and another two during the following month. So, having been sprinkled with holy water, we were well equipped to set about the preparation and implementation of activities involving a total of 400 young people. Resource persons and participants were buying tickets, standing in queues for visas, preparing presentations, and gathering material about their organizations and traditional foods, music, jokes and the like to share with others. Preparatory material, maps, emergency addresses and phone numbers, provisional programmes and handy tips about what to bring were on their way from the Secretariat to all involved. Moving 400 young people between countries and across continents can be quite an administrative affair. On the whole, we have been blessed in the success of this year's events on many different levels, and responses from participants wishing to share their new-found inspiration and enthu-siasm
have been a pleasure to receive. Our sincere thanks go to the organizers, the guest speakers, and the resource persons who generously gave their time and expertise to our events.
One of the most challenging parts of this past summer was the cash-flow crisis at the Secretariat, which almost paralysed our work completely. A number of grants were withheld until after the summer, for reasons beyond our control, obliging us to run our events with a minimum of funds and to rely on loans and rapid donations. We are very grateful to our friends, members, and partners who responded positively to our plea for support, which allowed our events to take place despite financial difficulty. This difficult period high-lighted the need for SYNDESMOS to establish a secure financial base with regular contributions and support from the Church - under whose blessing all our activities take place, in the heart of which we operate, and without which we are nothing.
We would like to close by thanking those Churches, individuals and organizations who have donated funds to SYNDESMOS this year. We are also grateful to those member movements which have made inkind contributions.So, for a full week following the proposed departure date, the contents of the SYNDESMOS General Secretariat, duly packed and positioned in the storage shed of the moving company, sat undisturbed until finally the move got underway. Meanwhile, we waited patiently, frustrated but full of anticipation, for the late arrival of the materials. We suspected that the real challenges and exhilarating moments had only just begun.
When the crates containing our materials finally arrived, we began to wonder at how SYNDESMOS had accumulated such an array of hardware, books, photographs, mementos, files and archive material. As we untangled countless computer wires and set up a working system for our three computers, we reflected on how SYNDESMOS would manage, over the years, to maintain this tradition of moving its Secretariat every time a new staff is acquired.
With a growing quantity of assets, frequent moves become increasingly difficult; gone are the 1980s, when the inventory of the office amounted to no more than a computer and a set of files transportable in the back of a car.
Whenever we are visited by a newcomer to the office, their pleasing comments about the surroundings, both inside and outside, remind us of those early weeks in March and April, during which we got our systems up and running. We thank the Missionary foundation "Simantro" and its president, Mr. Nikos Fetokakis, for kindly making it possible for the Secretariat to have its offices fee of charge in Holargos, one of the nicest areas of Athens. The Secretariat boasts two offices with a small kitchen and bathroom and balconies at both ends. It provides a perfect working environment: peaceful, breezy and pleasing to the eye. The pleasant surroundings made the initial, if frequent, frustrations of malfunctioning equipment and lack of Greek language easier to bear. One of our computers and our photocopier had evidently not enjoyed the week in the back of a van and continued to cause us problems for weeks. Our internet and e-mail access remained too sporadic for efficiency until after a few months had passed, and the introduction of a PC in an office which other-wise functions with Apple Macintoshes also had its good and bad side. However, we hope that the growing pains, inevitable at the start of any new endeavour, do not distract us from our focus: keeping Christ at the center of our lives and building on our shared responsibilities towards Orthodox Christian youth and their informed contact with other Christians.
It was only after the office was finally blessed with holy water on 4 July 2000 that we began to finally settle in to our new environment. There was sweet irony in the fact His Eminence, Metropolitan Efthimios of Achelos, SYNDESMOS Secretary-General from 1956 until 1964, honoured us by accepting the invitation to perform the ceremony. In blessing the offices, he also was blessing the very archive material dating from the time when he played a major role in SYNDESMOS, thereby making the past significant in the present. Attended by about 20 friends of SYNDESMOS from Greece, Jordan, Poland, Ukraine, Albania and elsewhere, the blessing ceremony was the fitting inauguration to the start of our real work. Thank you, your Eminence, for your continued involvement!
Six projects were due to take place within the six weeks following the office blessing, and another two during the following month. So, having been sprinkled with holy water, we were well equipped to set about the preparation and implementation of activities involving a total of 400 young people. Resource persons and participants were buying tickets, standing in queues for visas, preparing presentations, and gathering material about their organizations
and traditional foods, music, jokes and the like to share with others. Preparatory material, maps, emergency addresses and phone numbers, provisional programmes and handy tips about what to bring were on their way from the Secretariat to all involved. Moving 400 young people between countries and across continents can be quite an administrative affair. On the whole, we have been blessed in the success of this year's events on many different levels, and responses from participants wishing to share their new-found inspiration and enthusiasm have been a pleasure to receive. Our sincere thanks go to the organizers, the guest speak-ers, and the resource persons who generously gave their time and expertise to our events.
One of the most challenging parts of this past summer was the cash-flow crisis at the Secretariat, which almost paralysed our work completely. A number of grants were withheld until after the summer, for reasons beyond our control, obliging us to run our events with a minimum of funds and to rely on loans and rapid donations. We are very grateful to our friends, members, and partners who responded positively to our plea for support, which allowed our events to take place despite financial difficulty. This difficult period high-lighted the need for SYNDESMOS to establish a secure financial base with regular contributions
and support from the Church - under whose blessing all our ac-tivities take place, in the heart of which we operate, and without which we are nothing.
We would like to close by thanking those Churches, individuals and organizations who have donated funds to SYNDESMOS this year. We are also grateful to those member movements which have made inkind contributions.