A Loophole in care
​We need to talk about a small thing with big and horrible impacts. It has been called a blind spot in women's healthcare: it is called obstetric fistula. A fistula is a hole or canal that link two body parts, organs,  together that are normally separate. Obstetric means the female genitals, lower abdomen and childbirth. Obstetric fistulas is in most cases a childbirth injury that is caused by prolonged obstructed labor, but it can also appear during rape. When it appears it not only causes a hole  between the birth canal and the bladder or rectum so they can’t control their bladder, it is also commonly result of a stillborn child. And if this wasn't enough, the women are often driven away from their husbands, families and society due to lack of hygiene and smell from the leaking urine. Some women even stop drinking water so they don’t leak urine which can cause kidney failure.
       World Health Organization WHO estimate that 2 million women in sub-Saharan Africa, Arab region, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean are living with obstetric fistula but this number is based on only the women who seek help, meaning that many go under radar because of the shame and humiliation connected to the condition. With around 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occurring each year, Obstetric fistula is still an unknown injury mainly because it’s only affect marginalized members of society − the poor, young and illiterate women in remote area that don’t have an adequate maternal care and don’t have money for caesarean. This problem is showing us that we need to work with questions about equality and to prove health care around the world so even the most, at the time, powerless members of society can get a safe and adequate medical care. Leading to a normal and healthy life, a normal life.
       This medical condition is connected to a health system that is not meeting the needs of women and therefore the emancipation of women in general. Because the injure are not only affecting women’s health but also their independence and ability to earn a living and to have a social life. The core of human life as Hannah Arendt called it: To live among others. This international day is created to shine light on this women matter and to break the lack of knowledge associated with it. The United Nations UN wants to highlight women's health care and act accordingly with Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good health and well-being, including maternal health, to raise awareness and support to stop this devastating injury that is destroying lifes.  Obstetric fistula is preventable and can be avoided just by having an adequate medical care for pregnant women, postpone the first pregnancy until young girls are physically mature and timely access to obstetric care. To work with awakeness and knowledges around the injury can help women that are suffering to seek adequate medical care and nonetheless work with normalizing and minimize the stigma from society. As strange as it might sound fistula are in some communities seen as some kind of wrongdoing or punishment, rather then the medical condition that it is.
        The treatment for obstetric fistula has a good success rate at 90 percent (for less complex cases) if it’s done by a trained fistula surgeon. Which is a strong argument to end the suffer and terrible way of living. Because with full recovery, women can live a normal life, meaning no problem with bladder control and smell and no sequelae, they can even give birth to new children.  But behind every obstetric fistula is a women in suffer – many pray to God to take their life – she need a support system that can bring her back to the life among others, to enter the agora and to fully interact with time.
         Remember that it isn’t a privilege to have a good and safe health care, it is a human right. Health denot to freedom, the same freedom that lays in the concept of bio-power. But to realize that we need to spread the word and knowledge to the people. People are the core of a society and it’s what makes it alive. An organism that evolves and create: A dialectical movement between potentiality and actuality.  

Ewa Florin

On this world exist around 8,7 million animal and plant species.

More then 1 million of them are thretened.

To raise awerness of this topic, we celebrate the „world day of biodiversity“ on the 22th of May under the topic „our biodiversity, our food, our health“.

Because Biodiversity is important. For all of us.

But let´s start a little bit slower- what does the word biodiversity exactly mean?

Biodiversity includes three diverent topics that are all related to each other:

• the divercity of ecosystems
• the variety of species
• the genetic multiple within species.

So far so good, but where is the problem? Why do we celebrate this day?

As I said in the beginning, up to 1 million animal and plant species are thretened and it´s getting worse and worse. We don´t really know how many species live on our planet but according to estimates it should be around 8,7 million.

Additionally to the big amount of thretened species, the biodiversity on our planet goes back a lot in the last few years what means that a lot of species just die out. And to be honest- that is really scaring, at least for me. Every year around 58.000 animal species die out.

When you take a look back in the evolution, it is totally normal that species die out, but if you focus on the amount of today, nothing is normal anymore. At the moment we have the largest species extincion since the dinosaur died out, to make it a little bit clearer.

With phenomens like the climat change, the human beeing is responsible therefore that the biodiversity on our planet is threatened. And that is really strange when you realise that the humanity is depending on biodiversity.
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Biodiversity is important, for all of us, our food, our health and our existence in general.



Lioba Einhoff

Today is the world bee day. You maybe wonder why, because it seems like there are so much more important things than bees.
But most people do not know is that bees are not only responsible for honey. There are very important for so much more.

With around 25.000 to 30.000 species bees are the biggest group of pollinators and this means a lot.
Besides bees, other common pollinators are butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, beetles and some vertebrate pollinators like bats ,some birds and a few monkey species.
A few of those pollinators like bees, bats and hummingbirds are threaten by human activities and in general the diversity of pollinators is striking. This is not good for any ecosystem because around 95% of wild flowers and 35% of the world agriculture are relying on pollinators.
You see, if we would not have pollinators in our ecosystem the world hunger would be even bigger.

But why do we even have to save the bees? Why are they threaten and why are they dying?
Those questions are not very easy to answer,
It seems like there are a few reasons which leading to the “bee dying” especially when the reasons are combined.
One reason are insecticides, which a lot of farmers but also private gardeners using to prevent insect attacks on their plants.
Another reason is “the cocktail effect” which basically means that the bees absorb all the bad stuff from the air. For example the exhaust gases of cars and all the other toxic substance of the air and water.
So in conclusion the “cocktail effect” is not very good!
A third reason is the monopoly agriculture. Bees need biodiversity to survive and this is simply not given in the modern agriculture.
A few other reasons are  the dissection of biotopes, the climate change (because the bloom of a lot of flowers changes) and the light Pollution.

Maybe you realised one Things About all of those reasons?
Yes correct, they are made by us, humans.
So with our behaviour we put ourself in danger, because like I already wrote, bees are partly the reason for our food.
If their would be no bees their would be more than 30% less food in the world.
I think we should all agree on the fact that we have to save the bees!

But what can we do to save them?
You can stop using insecticides. Today there exist a lot of alternative pesticides which are not dangerous for bees.
In the summer when it is hot you can give them water so they have something to drink.
Another thing you can do is to plant crops which are bee friendly in your garden or if you do not have a garden you can also do it in a local park.
For the bees it does not matter where you do it.
It also helps to you buy honey from a local bee-keeper because then you support the bees around you and not the ones who produced your imported honey.
So, as you see there are a lot of different things that you can do to save the bees.

And to finish this article, here is one fact about bees which I find pretty amazing:
In their Lifetime bees fly so much that they circle the earth for 900 times. So with this nice fact: Bee aware of those problems and bee well!

​#Savethebees & #happybeeday

written by Johanna Dilling 

​Today is the 50th anniversary of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. This day has been celebrated annually since 1969, when the first International Telegraph Convention was signed and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was formed. The purpose of the day is to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide.

Many people are so used to being near their phones or 4G/Wi-Fi all the time, and they might not even think that not all of us have the same access to Internet and social media. Not all the world’s people are preoccupied with how many likes their Instagram picture got or if anyone else in the virtual world agrees with their posts or comments, because they don’t even have access to Internet. And to them, a simple action such as browsing on Internet and having the whole of world’s information in their hands might seem like a miracle.

​Nonetheless, even if there are so many negative sides to social media and Internet, and phone addiction is a serious problem, everyone should have the right to Internet and information. It is important for understanding cultural differences and for improving cultural integration and diversity. It connects people from all over the world, helps them discuss various problems with people from many backgrounds in life. Therefore, a step forward in bridging the digital divide is important in order to unite different nationalities and cultures and bring a better understanding of others and their stories.

The achievements in telecommunication have impact on many problems of the world. In the year of 2012, the focus of the day was on gender. We can use the power of technologies to end discrimination and empower women to achieve their place as equals in the world. Therefore, improvements in technologies also greatly impact the daily lives of women and can make life easier for them.

Last year focused on artificial intelligence, as AI-based technologies are already a key component of tools being used to improve people’s lives by improving healthcare, education, finance, agriculture and transportation.

This year, the focus of the day is on “Bridging the Standardization gap.” ITU standards make it possible to connect to the internet, watch TV and listen to the radio, and ensure interoperability, open up global markets and spur innovation. ITU’s mission is setting upcoming 5G standards that they expect people to take for granted in the future: self-driving cars, safer and smart cities and so on.
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Also, one of the aims of ITU is promoting the implementation of international standards in developing countries. Houlin Zhao, the Secretary-General of the ITU, calls upon everyone to support the programme and prosperity and well-being for developed and developing countries!

​Jaanika Malla

Source: https://www.un.org/en/events/telecommunicationday/index.shtml

Living in peace is about living harmoniously with yourself, and obviously all peoples beings around you. Living in peace is both an outward and an inward process. Outwardly, it’s a way of life in which we respect and love each other in spite of our cultural, religious, and political differences. There are some basics way of life to live in peace that cannot be overlooked, such as being non-violent, being tolerant, celebrating wondrous-life full of good memories, try to be the most fair with you and the others to live in together in peace every day and until the end of your life.

Written by Jordy Forget

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Sources: https://msolajpiced.wordpress.com/2018/05/08/16-may-international-day-of-living-together-in-peace/
https://www.startofhappiness.com/9-simple-ways-create-peaceful-life/

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During our European Youth Week which we celebrated last week, we had a workshop and a debate about Europe itself.
I personally really enjoyed the exchange between all of us, because we were people from Estonia, Hungary, Sweden, Greece, France and Germany, so there were a lot of different opinions and inputs.

I actually expected more commune opinions, because we are all doing an EVS at the moment, and that´s just possible because of the European Union, so we all experience one of the (in my opinion) biggest advantages of the EU.
Because of that I expected everyone to be a little bit more interested in the topic of the EU and -at least- to participate in the elections on the 26th of may. But it wasn´t like that!

​We also have volunteers who dont´t want to vote at all. To be honest, that scares me a little bit. Because voting is important. We have a voice and we have to use it, otherwise we will give our voice automaticly to the extrem parties which profite from our indifference. During the last european elections five years ago, there was a voter turnout of 43,09%, that is not enought. But when there are just so few people voting, our vote is even more important and we can change something.

But back to the topic of the debate, it was not just about voting. We discussed a lot of different topics related to the EU, for example environment, wars and armies, animal treatment and so one. We also had some equal opinions, for example about the topic „sexual identity“. We all think that everyone should be accepted how he or she is, and that the EU still have to do a lot about that. And in relation to the treatment of animals we also had the opinion that the EU has to change something. But when we spoke about how much and what to change, we had different views again.

But that´s logic, because we all grow up in different environments, with different people by our side and we all made different experiences. That formed our opinions and our view on life in general. And that is good and important, at least in my eyes.

I think we should all discuss a little bit more. The EU itself lives from people with many different oppinions, and not only the EU but every single person benefit from good (and of course respectful!) discussions.



Lioba Einhoff

​Last week, from the 29th of april to the 5th of may, we celebrated the european youth week under the topic „Democracy and me“.

We started on Thursday with a radio event, everyone had to choose one topic about which he or she spoke for ten minutes. I personally enjoyed it a lot to here all the opinions of the other volunters about european questions, and I think the whole two ours had a good flow.
After the broadcast, we made a cycling promotion tour. We cycled around all the important places in Serres, for example the main square and the city hall, weared our shirts and made photos with a banner and posters.
On Friday we had a debate and a workshop about european topics and questions, and as a completion of the whole week we had a football match on Saturday where everyone could take part.

But why did we celebrate this week?
Because Europe is important, for all of us, and we are important for Europe.
There have to be more awerness for the European Union, because it affects our everyday life more than most of us expect.
For example when we travel through Europe without the need of a passport, without border controls. When we have the opportunity to take part in Erasmus programs, as I do it at the moment or when we see the exchange with other citizens of the EU. I could continue like that, there are a lot of reasons why the EU, at least in my eyes, is a really important institution for all of us.

But to be serious- there are also a lot of things that can be improved.
And that is, to come back to the topic, about us. It is our responsibility, we have the chance to make the EU to our EU, we can (and I think we have to) participate, vote and improve. Especially the youth is important for that.
And to sensitize for the European Union itself, we celebrated the European Youth week.

Of course, there are also other reasons. We want to bring (especially young) people together and go into an exchange.

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I think it was a really nice week, thanks for everyone who took part!



Lioba Einhoff