One neighborhood, a lot of stories – 3rd Primary School of Thessaloniki, Greece
The 5th graders of the two classes of the 3rd Primary School of Thessaloniki, after being informed about what exactly NEMESIS is and what it entails, decided to implement their project entitled “One neighbourhood, a lot of stories”.
Several hours of discussion and recording of the neighbourhood problems followed, showing the intense concern and observation of the children about what happens every day in their neighbourhood, as well as their strong willingness to contribute to a positive change. What was impressive was the plethora of ideas and their willingness to make them a reality.
Under the supervision of the teachers, the children themselves decided to carry out the following activities:
The first class (E1) undertook to collect, digitally record and then translate into English information about the area’s streets. It is a fact that students make short daily trips from home to school or other places in their neighbourhood. They may have crossed a street countless times, knowing its name, but never wondered, up until today, how and why it got its name. Now, they are motivated as, thanks to NEMESIS, they will be able to search for and listen to the stories behind the street names which are part of their neighbourhood and are near their home and school. As part of this process, they will create stickers where all this information will be captured in the form of QR codes and will be posted in various parts of the neighbourhood by the children accompanied by their parents. In this way, anyone who wishes can easily scan the code with a mobile phone to obtain the information that will be provided.
The second class (E2) decided to write stories related to their neighbourhood that they have either heard from their grandparents and parents or will write them themselves. Then the stories will be illustrated with the help of the Visual Arts teacher and will be translated into English. Finally, an audiobook will be created that will be available at the Municipal Children’s Library of the neighbourhood in order to benefit as many children as possible as well as children with visual impairments and other difficulties.
Even though the Covid-19 pandemic has provided a lot of restrictions to schools and most importantly to teachers and students, it has thus not constrained their willingness and desire to improve their neighbourhood and collectively work towards bringing social value to their mission by telling all the untold stories of their neighbourhood reinforcing in this way the city’s culture.