During my Erasmus+ project in Athens at Yamochori, we transitioned from the wilderness to this sustainable community, living in tents and sharing spaces with an Armenian woman who had previously traveled to Italy. We embraced a simple, sustainable lifestyle, starting our days with hearty meals like onion soup and stuffed vegetables, and using composting toilets. On the first day we woke up to a breakfast of eggs, bread, coffee and different vegetarian foods sourced from the local garden. On the first day we had played some icebreaker games to get to know each other, one of them was that we had to weare name tags with letters and we had to find others who had the missing letters to complet our name. At one of the firsts nights we had a heavy rain and everyone was rashing to close and secore the tents, also at nights it was very cold and in the morning it was very hot. Moreover, they explained to ass how the yahochori village was warking and they expleind to ass how they build and support and how it operates and its significance as a sustainable living space. We used creative tools like videos and visual aids to understand how different organizations work, and we emphasized making spaces inclusive for everyone, encouraging participants to feel comfortable being themselves.
The main reason of the project it was to learn more thing about community mapping, what is it how its works and the different ways we can make a community map. Learning about this project it allowed us to explore different ways to create maps not necessarily geographic but based on emotions, stories and local wildlife. The people that live in yamachori were trying to create an old path that people from many years before used to transfer salt and the “salt road” its the name of the path. We walked the path in two days and one of the tasked that we had while hiking the paths it was to fined the local flora and fauna, take pictures of the path, found defriend sounds that we where hearing while walking and recorded them find places that where not accessible and write them down so we can make the path more accessible to the people.
Beyond the physical tasks, we engaged in daily reflections that challenged us to consider how the place was shaping us, what new skills we were developing, and how we could apply these learnings to our future. These moments of self-awareness, combined with sociocracy decision-making sessions, honed my teamwork skills, strengthened my English, and deepened my understanding of social sustainability. This project not only reshaped my perspective on communal living and environmental responsibility but also demonstrated how small, conscious actions can have a lasting impact on both people and the planet.
