Dankschreiben von Garyfallia

Liebe Olivenbäumchen Patinnen und Paten!

Von Garyfallia habe ich nun ein herzliches Dankschreiben bekommen, das ich natürlich an Euch weitergeben möchte:

Hello dear donors,

We are a three-member family consisting of me Garyfallia Stavraki (age 48), Vangelis Mantzios (age 55) and our son Apostolis Mantzios (age 24). Apostolis suffers from autism and has a mental disability of 81%. He has studied at a special school in Athens for children with disabilities up to 20 years specializing in gardening. Unfortunately in Greece after this age no social care is provided for these children! His future would be locked in the walls of a house, and all our troubles would probably be lost for what he had learned so far.

For this reason we decided to leave the city and move to our village in Messinia! My father's real estate is located in an abandoned village of Messinia called Neraidovrisi. There most houses have been demolished except for one that was kindly given to us by its owners to house! After a hard work because our estate had been neglected for many decades and its landscape was very wild, we were able to have our organic crops, our food, our oil and our beauty products that we sell in the summer and come from natural products of our estate.

Unfortunately due to an electrical short circuit our house burned down along with all our possessions in January 2018. Within minutes we lost all of our household, clothing and memories. In our plans before the fire it was to plant 200 olive trees but after the fire our money we had been working hard on, was used to make the roof of the burnt house because the winter rains would completely destroy it.

My family's greatest wish and joy was to go back to our beloved village and continue the simple but happy life we had before the devastating fire. Our meeting with Georgios Trumpeter was a real blessing for our family. With great understanding and love ,helped us to reside in our village and to stand on our feet again.

The donation of all of you, helped make our dream a reality and plant 300 olive trees in our estate.

A thank you is very little for the incredible help you gave us to make our dreams come true.

A thank you is very little for the power this gift has given us to continue our lives!

A thank you is very little for the impetus you gave us for a better future!

Thanks for helping our family!

Thank you for giving life to all these ruined estates!!

The first production of olive trees we will have, we give all the donors one liter of organic olive oil and each olive tree will have a wooden sign with the donor's name! You are all, the godmothers and the godfathers of our olivetrees! The sight of our trees full of your names will set a wonderful example of solidarity and mutual help, which we would be very proud to show!!

You have a small family as yours in our village in Neraidovrisi Messinia and everybody of you in Greece has a small corner in our village and in our heart that is waiting for you with all its love! When you come to Greece we will be waiting for you to visit us!

A great idea for the future to give back the solidarity we have already received from all of you, is to host the kids in need at our property and to do workshops and lessons on organic farming for the manufacture of cosmetics and soaps and to share with them all our knowledge and beautiful scenery of our land.

May God protect you!

Thank you very much!

Garyfallia Stavraki
Vangelis Mantzios
Apostolos Mantzios