The woman is the one that usually organizes and supports home economics. She will take care of the food, the kids and their clothes. She will keep things together at difficult times and she will cope with everything in the best possible way so that things will go on as usual before misery drives her to moral and domestic paralysis. Every woman, though, needs the luxury to be taken care through healthy (strong) interpersonal relationships.

She needs to be with her friends so as to list all of her problems and by discussing about them to find out that she is not on her own, that her problems are not her own. They are shared by all women. Common problems that seek common solutions.  At the cultural neighborhood of the municipality of Sykies, every Monday the refugee women of Syria will be gathering to relax, to chat and to ….sew. Needles and threads are sued together with words that are shared, together with the dreams that are made. Germany or Holland? Will the friendship go on at the next city that life will take them or they will be found away from one another? Sheets, trousers and curtains are sued. They teach one another sewing techniques. As they talk, they reorganize their homes. They regain the woman’s self-esteem that has found the way to take care of her home again.

In other words, the sewing lab, that YMCA of Thessaloniki organizes at the cultural neighborhood is a ……..“woman’s issue”.

Anna Magdalini Argyri