“What matters is giving the children real opportunities and the space to show what they can do”.
Giorgos, Social Worker at The HOME Project
Growing up in a small village in Greece, Giorgos saw early on how prejudice can shape the way people are treated. But working with children was not originally part of the future he imagined for himself. Passionate about sports, he initially hoped to pursue a career in the field. It was almost by chance that he enrolled in the School of Social Work. From his first semester, however, something clicked.
“I became very interested in human rights”, he recalls. During his studies, placements in human rights and addiction services gave him his first experience of what social work meant beyond the classroom. Gradually, the profession he had not originally planned to pursue became the one in which he wanted to build his future.
His decision to work with unaccompanied children and teenagers was also personal. Growing up in a small community, Giorgos had witnessed racism first-hand and had seen how children from refugee backgrounds could be viewed and treated differently. “These children have exactly the same potential as children from Greece or anywhere else”, he says. “What they need is the right support, the right opportunities, and the space and time to express themselves and grow”.
Giorgos joined The HOME Project two and a half years ago as a social worker. He remembers noticing the details: the relationships between the children and the people caring for them, but also the clothes, the food, the activities and the equipment available inside the house. “Some of these things might seem simple, but they are not”, he says. “They matter”.
Since then, the children living at the shelter have changed, and so has the work. Today, Giorgos works primarily with teenagers, and no two days are quite the same. A child may be doing well one week and struggling the next. There can be conflicts, intense emotions or periods when a young person withdraws from school, activities or the people around them. Giorgos has learned not to expect progress to follow a straight line.
“We work with children, with people who are constantly changing. Their goals change, their emotions change, the way they think changes. So every day can be a new experience”. During difficult periods, his priority is to protect the relationship. “Even when a child is going through a difficult time, I want them to know that they can come and talk to me”, he explains. For Giorgos, being present does not mean having every answer. It means remaining calm, available and consistent enough for a child to know that a difficult day, or even a difficult month, does not change the fact that someone is still there.
Often, the moments that stay with him are much simpler. A trip to the sea. An afternoon in a park. A board game. “For us, these things may seem relatively simple. For the children, they can mean something much bigger”, he says. “They translate into care and interest. They mean that someone listened to their voice and genuinely took them into account”. That principle extends to everyday life inside the shelter. “At the end of the day, this is their home and their opinion should count”, Giorgos says. There are rules that cannot change, but he believes children should have a genuine say in the things that can: the activities they take part in, their education, the interests they want to explore and the experiences they would like to have.
“The important thing is for there to be an open door. For them to know they can speak, that someone will listen and that their opinion matters”. None of this, he is quick to point out, happens through the work of one person. At The HOME Project, social workers, psychologists, educators, lawyers and caregivers bring different perspectives and expertise to the support of each child. Some members of the team have worked alongside Giorgos since his first day at the shelter. That continuity, he believes, matters as much to the children as it does to the professionals. “Supporting children is a team effort. If the team does not have strong foundations, whatever activity or intervention you try to build is very difficult to sustain”, he emphasizes.
For Giorgos, success is therefore rarely one dramatic moment. It can be a child gradually learning Greek, discovering an interest through an activity, developing a new skill or beginning to understand how to navigate the world of work. Sometimes, it is simply seeing stability return to the house after a difficult period.
“I try not to see either a success or a failure as something final”, he explains. A difficult period does not mean that everything has been lost, just as one achievement does not mean the work is finished. What matters most is what remains when a young person eventually leaves. “I want a child, when they leave here and move into their own home, to be ready to live as an adult. But I also want them to take beautiful experiences with them and remember this place as something positive. For me, that is real success”.
Now, after two and a half years as a resident social worker, Giorgos is preparing to take on a new role as Shelter Coordinator, carrying with him what those years of working directly alongside the children have taught him.
And if there is one thing he wishes people outside the refugee field understood, it is that supporting these young people is not about deciding what their lives should look like. “We cannot decide their lives for them. What we can do is give them as many tools as we have available and help them choose which ones they can use to build their own lives”.
For Giorgos, it comes back to something much simpler. “Above all, they are children. They all have goals, from the smallest to the biggest. What matters is giving them real opportunities and the space to show what they can do”.