ESN Kapa Athens

Skiing or sledging definitely does not belong to the activities ESN’s new Section in the Spotlight of December can do with their exchange students as they come from the sunny Athens, Greece. ESN Kapa Athens was founded 3 years ago by a bunch of friends and now there are many enthusiastic Newbies in the “Kapa Family” who are supported by the alumni. They are not only working together for ESN, but some of them live together, go on vacation together and work in the same companies, which bonds them even more. After their weekly meeting they go out together and this year they will also organize a New Year’s reunion in the UK, where one of the members is on ERASMUS. They will travel together and spend some time abroad all together. The next reunion will be in Portugal to visit another member abroad.

ESN Kapa Athens organizes many different activities for their exchange students and even lets the students decide where they will go for the next trip, e.g. a trip to Crete in cooperation with ESN Tei of Crete. They also organize many things to show the exchange students the ancient Greece and the rich Greek culture and work closely together with other Greek sections as ESN Tei of Crete and ESN Ntua Athens. They even teach the students how to dance the typical Greek dances. A trip to the Zoo and sports events as bowling and paintball are also part the program.  The typical ESN activities as Treasure Hunts and Eurodinners are on the list as well. A quite unique event is the Killer Game. The ERASMUS students have the task to “kill” each other by touching each other with weird things like bananas, pillows, spoons and more. Next to all of these activities the section is also aware of their social responsibilities. They work together with primary schools on educational programs and send the exchange students to the schools. Furthermore they did a reforestation in Athens. Even more important the section makes big progress in the ExchangeAbility Project. Three members of the section are with disabilities and help them to make ESN and the ERASMUS program more accessible. The section took also the initiative to start mapping the accessibility of all faculties of the University of Athens to gather information for the international students and they can also provide the university with information where the accessibility has to be improved. They even co-organize the European Disability Forum together with the Faculty of Medicine. This Forum is an ExchangeAbility conference in the end of December where they organize workshops and sessions to improve the situation for people with disabilities.

Although ESN Kapa Athens is quite new in the ESN world, they are very active in the national and international level of ESN. They organized the first Greek NP and even started the Greek ESN Magazine, where they regularly publish articles. One member is part of the newly established National Board of ESN Greece, ESN Kapa Athens was also the home section of the Greek NR 2009/2010! The most famous member of ESN Kapa Athens is probably the current ESN President Eva Ntovolou, who is also one of the founders of the section. Even the WPA Rania Chantzopoulou was once member of the section and founded a new one afterwards.