“All people, regardless of their age, gender, where they live or who they love, have the right to health” Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS
On the 1st of December is World AIDS Day.
At the moment there are about 36.7 million people living with HIV worldwide. But only 60% of them know they are HIV positive. The rest of them do not know. Less than half of the people living with HIV are on antiretroviral therapy and only 38% have achieved undetectable levels of HIV.
A person living with HIV who starts antiretroviral therapy today will have the same live expectancy as an HIV-negative person of the same age. Although it is possible to live with HIV nowadays 1 million people died from a HIV related disease in 2016.
The UN goal is the 90-90-90-Treatment for all.
By 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status.
By 2020, 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy.
By 2020, 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression.
This year’s campaign is called: My health, My right. The right to health is contained in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. It says everyone has the right to health, no matter what their health requires. Firstly it is important that everyone has the access to the treatment of an illness, including physical and mental diseases. Secondly everyone should be able to decide about one`s own health. Furthermore everyone has the right to be treated with respect and dignity. The campaign should remember that health is not only the access to medical treatment but also good living standards. For instance it is adequate sanitation, healthy working conditions, a clean environment and access to justice.
What does the right to health mean to you?
Get more information on http://www.unaids.org.

​By Vera Lennartz

Violence against women is like a sickness. One in three women and girls experience violence in their lifetime and this is happening everywhere, in every country and every society.  It happens at home, in schools, on the streets, at work, on the internet and in refugee camps. It happens during war, and even in the absence of war. Too often, it is normalized and goes unpunished.
To know more about this topic, I have visited the web site of UN Women where you can find more information about the forms of violence against women. In this web site, they describe 5 different forms:
1 - Intimate Partner violence: This is the most common form of violence against women around the world and this is any behaviour by a current or former partner or spouse that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm. Worldwide, 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence – mostly by an intimate partner.
2 -  Sexual violence: Sexual violence is any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances against a person´s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting. These include: unwanted sexual advances, rape, Sexual abuse of children and forced marriage.
3 – Human trafficking: it is the acquisition and exploitation of people, through means, such as force, fraud or deception. The practice ensnares millions of women and girls into modern-day slavery, many of whom are sexually exploited. 71% of all trafficking victims worldwide are women and girls
4 – Female Genital Mutilation: it´s includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Beyond extreme physical and psychological pain, the practice carries many health risks, including death. The majority of girls were cut before 5.
5 – Child Marriage: It´s usually means an end to girl´s education, vocation and her right to make life choices. Research confirms that girls who marry in childhood are at greater risk for intimate partner violence than girls of the same age who marry later.
These forms of violence are sustained in the fact that men are above women. We have been raised in a society where media, movies, religion, mark a great difference between the roles of both genders. It means that men have to be strong, powerful and also they have to bring the resources to home and women have to be sensitive, weak and, of course, they have to stay at home taking care of the children. And this also affects to our perception of being in couple, to our perception of love, and this can lead us to some of the forms of violence that we saw before.
Thanks to the work of a lot of people, organisations and governments this situation is changing. They are trying to change this reality, trying to explain a different and saner kind of love, promoting a kind of relationship where one don´t try to be the owner of the other, where you enjoy your freedom being in couple, where you respect when your partner says “no”.
Each one of us has a big responsibility not just denouncing when we see something wrong but to share a saner perception of love to our children at home, in the schools, in our messages, media, etc. 25 of November is the International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women and it´s in our hands to change this inequality between boys and girls, men and women. We are different, but equals in rights.
Leave no one behind - End violence against women.
​
If you want to know more about this topic, check the links below.
European Institute for Gender Equality:
http://eige.europa.eu/gender-based-violence/eiges-studies-gender-based-violence/study-identify-and-map-existing-data-and-resources-sexual-violence-against-women-eu
UN Women web site:
http://interactive.unwomen.org/multimedia/infographic/violenceagainstwomen/en/index.html#nav-6
 
-Kilian Martel Álamo-

​The last Sunday, in the city of Serres, Praxis Greece Team participated in the 33rd edition of the Gyros Race. As you know, we work in our info centre with the people from the refugee camp and one of our goals is to involve them in the normal life of the city. For this reason we saw in this running race an opportunity to bring them the possibility to have a different day, participating in an event that bring together a lot of people in the city of Serres.
Our day started around 9:30 am in our office, where we had the meeting with the guys from the refugee camp. Once there, we brought all our staff: table, posters and boxes, for our campaign to collect second hand running shoes. When our stand was ready, we went to register ourselves and each one of us got his/her number.
Few minutes before the race, we were really excited. The adrenaline was running in our veins, and our little friends from Iraq were asking me all the time if we would be the next ones. They wanted to start as sooner as possible. When our time arrived, the little kids ran like lightnings leaving us behind.
Personally, having them with us in the event was an extra motivation. Their faces before and after the race show me how they need this kind of things.  They want to participate in the daily life of the local community and this kind of event brings them the possibility to develop themselves sharing time with the locals, and also is an opportunity for the community of Serres to know them and discover that after the tag of “refugees” are humans and that we share more things that they can imagine.
Kilian Martel Álamo

 ​Today is the World Children´s Day. It´s a special day here in Praxis Greece because we have been working with lovely children for the last months.
 They have done a big trip to come to Greece and now, since our first day here in Serres, we are trying to support them, trying to feed their desire to have a normal life after everything that they have been through.
When we talk about World Children´s Day we have to talk about Children´s rights. Children’s rights are human rights for children. The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international legal agreement (or ‘treaty’) that recognizes specific rights for children.
“All Children have the same rights”
Children have the right to Protection, Provision and Participation... But from my experience here in Greece, it depends where you are from. During the last years, we have seen how at the doors of Europe, thousands of children have risked their live crossing the Mediterranean Sea with their families trying to find a better future far away from the war or how, once here, they have to live in infrahuman conditions. We have seen how they are not going to school or how they live in tents, no matter the weather - in summer or winter. We also have seen how the camps are located outside the cities, or in industrial areas, which makes harder their participation in the communities. Those things are happening right now here, in Europe.
This day has to be an attention call for the governments to implement policies to change this situation, to protect the children, and their families, and comply with each one of the 54 articles in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

Tolerance: In my opinion it means that tolerance is a vital element of our society. We tolerate someone's defectives such as our neighboor's as they tolerate ours in order to live all together. However, it is important limits to be taken so as mutual respect and understanding to be the main goal to our communication.
-Sophie, Greece-

Tolerance:

• Accepting diversity
  
• Accepting that the opinion of others might be different
• Appriciating that every individual culture is different
• Peace begins with tolerance and respect for everyone
• It doesn't mean that you give up what you believe in but that you don't want everybody to believe in the same
  

-Vera, Germany-

Tolerance: Tolerance came out to the society with the enlightenment and human rights. Taking under consideration that societies depend on the initial ideas of enlightenment the word tolerance can be expressed as permissiveness and mutual deference between people which came from the respect of freedom of expression. However, that does not mean that any exploitation to that right is desirible by offending other people.
-Apostolis, Greece-

Tolerance: Even though in the beggining the word Tolerance  made me think of the tolerance between people with different colour, it seems to be much more. Possibly, it is refered to anything which is different, such as religion, education, even the notions of a person. As the time is passing by, I understood that although we have features that make us different from each other such as our style, our music preferencs, there are more important things that make us reunited. For example when a person is as sensitive as we are or humor. Humor is a vital element.
Being tolerant gives the opportunity to discover not only the person, who is different from us, but also ourselves due to the way we handle new situations.
How do we wish to be accepted if we do not give a go being tolerant or accepting the person who stands next to us?
-Vaia, Greece-

As different as people can be, also the ways and words used to describe the term tolerance are very versatile.

For me personally, tolerance is a mixture of things that add up to one extensive meaning. It consists of peace-making, not being indifferent, but rather open-minded. Just like many other things, tolerance starts with the little things; of course, it is about respecting other views, religions, opinions and origins, but seen in a smaller context it is important to think and talk about appreciation.

Appreciate what you and others are provided with and what you share. To appreciate things that seem to have happened naturally to you, but have truly been hard work for the people that went for it and fulfilled the task. Moreover, I feel like tolerance is about appreciating what you have in your opposite. Whether learning to be thankful for things a person surrounding you does or accepting that you may not agree in all point, but you are still able to learn from the different opinion. In addition, at least for me, tolerance is not only about earth and all her givings.
In fact, I guess that tolerance is all about acceptance, progress and learning.

It's learning to be understanding and to show interest to new ways of thinking, new people and new cultures. It's about letting this newly learned things develop into appreciation, interaction and exchange, in order to gain open mindedness and perhaps in some way trust and respect.

Tolerance is not to judge at all and if you fear you are about to judge somebody or something, go ask the corresponding person why he or she did something that might have made you jump to conclusions too quickly, because probably he or she did something that is totally normal to him or her.

Starting with being kind and going on to maybe walking up to this woman or man that you use to see on the train each and every day, but to whom you have never talked to or at least smiled at, ending with joining an organisation there are only so many things you can do that will all have at least a little impact in order to promote and raise awareness on tolerance and its importance.
 
 
Written by: Karolin Rippich

When we hear the word tolerance there are a lot of things that might come to our mind and often we perceive the meaning of the word differently. Can we say that there is one concrete definition for this? Definetly there is a version in vocabulary books and that is expected to be commonly accepted in our society.

On 1995 UNESCO’s Member States adopted a Declaration of Principles on Tolerance. According to the declaration, tolerance is respect and appreciation of the rich variety of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. Tolerance recognizes the universal human rights and fundamental freedom of others. There are 7,4 billion people in the world and we are naturally diverse, which means that only tolerance can ensure the survival of mixed communities in every region of the globe.

But why it is so that sometimes it is hard to be tolerant to someone or something? We are often comfortable with what we already know and are used to, so when something new comes, we hesitate and in order to protect ourselves we stay true to what we already know. We can say people are often slaves of our habits. It’s comfortable for us.

Maybe you have heared a quote: „Life begins with one step outside your comfort zone“ and I believe that illustrates well how building tolerance to new situations, different people, traditions works. It’s not comfortable at first, but while you are giving it a chance, you might discover a whole new way of life. It is important to keep your mind open and let the world suprise you.

Education for tolerance should aim at countering influences that lead to fear and exclusion of others, and should help young people develop capacities for independent judgement, critical thinking and ethical reasoning. Here the interpersonal intelligence comes really handy. The core of interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other’s emotions, motives, wishes, ideas and relate to them. It is important to know that the diversity of our world's many religions, languages, cultures and ethnicities is not a pretext for conflict, but is a treasure that enriches us all. It gives us many opportunities for co-operation and growth.  
It would be difficult to ask everyone to be tolerant towards everyone and eveything, but we can always start with smaller steps. What can we do in our everyday situations to practice becoming more tolerant?

- Listen carefully without jumping to conclusions
Be an active listener.  While having a converstation with someone really listen what they have to say and try to understand. Everyone has their own story to share and we want to be listened. Give your full attention to the person you are talking to.
- Try to understand the other person’s point of view
Try to put yourself into  other person’s shoes and truly understand what they are saying. Ask questions to understand where they are coming from with those ideas. What makes them think like this. All of us have their own experiences and ideas that have shaped us the way we are and what we believe in.
- Agree to disagree
You might not agree with the person and their beliefs or opinions, and that’s okay. We’re all different perception of life.  Once you accept that it’s okay to “agree to disagree” it should be easier to understand others. Just let them tell their story and learn something from them.
 
I would like to end this writing with my favourite thought:
TOLERANCE: The ability to respect and accept the way we and things are, things I can’t change and things that don’t hurt me.
 

Maris Lepp

In the name of World Diabetes Day, which is on the 14th of November, we would like to share more information about this disease.
Nowadays more and more people suffer from diabetes, and it is really important to start to care more about our health.
The first step is the control, visit your doctor and ask for the blood sugar check. There are many symptoms for the diabetes just like either obesity or weight loss, frequent urination, lack of energy and excessive thirst.
Types of diabetes can be Type 1, Type 2, Gestational Diabetes, and Pre-diabetes.
Gestational Diabetes usually resolves after the birth of a baby. Pre-diabetes is when the blood sugar is at the borderline, higher than the normal one, but lower than diabetics.
In Type 1 diabetes, the cells of the pancreas are destroyed by the immune system by mistake. Type 1 diabetes is insulin dependent.
In Type 2 diabetes the pancreas produces enough insulin but something goes wrong either with the receptor binding or insulin signaling inside the target cells. The cells are not responsible for the insulin and therefore cannot import the glucose, so it stays in the blood. In other name Type 2 diabetes can be called insulin resistant.
All of the diabetes types can be caused by genetic factors, but a main causes can be an unhealthy lifestyle.

The Organization Praxis Greece would like to join and show its support for diabetic people with our personal goals for this day we reduce our sugar intake.
All of us promised him/herself to make something different today. Which can mean don’t put sugar to her/his coffee, or tea, don’t eat chocolate, or pastries from the bakery.
It is just a small refuse but still we do something for our own health, and support the diabetic people around us.

Check out more about World Diabetes Day in the original page of the international day:
http://www.worlddiabetesday.org/


Dóra Major