By: Aditi Pawa
Immigrant communities have always felt like they had a dynamic soul, ebbing and flowing and moving around and within us. It’s a joining of people who are different to everyone around them except each other, and more often than not it is a community defined by hardship, one that has suffered and suffered again repeatedly. First, they were given a reason to leave. Then, they had to do the work to leave. And for the rest of their lives, they will be doing the work of trying to fit in, to attempting to carve a place for themselves in a place they were never meant to be—or worse, changing themselves to become more palatable to the place.
So, my form of community building has always been to make life a little bit easier for immigrant—and, once I got to college, refugee—families. It started with wanting to help my parents, my friend’s parents, the kids in my classes who had just moved here from across the world. Honestly, it’s small work, barely work at all. Community building is simply a result of being a community member; respond to all favors with a resounding “of course!,” offer help whenever struggle is seen, insist on helping when you can tell people are only declining because they don’t want to be a burden.
I’m still unsure about how exactly to take this concept abroad. It’s easy when it’s simply the people you’re around anyways, or it’s the work through an organization you’re a part of. When I’m in Athens, I will obviously be able to contribute through the organization I’m volunteering with, but how do I make an impact outside of that? It’s a difficult questions, especially because much of the impact I have made has been because I live in a country where I know the language and the rules and know how to make the transition easier for other people, rather than having to go through the transition of being in a new place myself, as I will have to do in Greece.
I’m curious to see what solution I find. I only have about three weeks until I leave now, so I’ll find out soon.
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