SAVE THE ARCHIVES - AN INITIATIVE TO PRESERVE GREEK MIGRATION HISTORY
“I am very fortunate to have located my father’s entry archive from when he left Greece to arrive to Canada in the 1970s. Having this framed and in my office, it helps remind me of the sacrifices my parents made to come to an unknown country, start from scratch and raise their children. ”
Assuming you are of Greek descent, I will start out with a vague, yet legitimate, question: How important is your Greek heritage to you?
I would expect those of Greek decent to immediately shout out with pride – EXTREMELY, VERY, TREMENDOUSLY, MASSIVELY or something along those lines. What if I told you that the physical migration records of hundreds of thousands of Greeks that took the bold move to leave their homeland years ago are close to being destroyed?
This is Potentially Devastating
On a recent trip to Athens, Greece, I had the pleasure of being introduced to the head of the International Organization for Migration, Daniel Esdras. Learning more about what Daniel had in the basement of the IOM in Athens and discussing with the Ambassador of Canada to Greece, Robert Peck, we decided to create a global initiative to raise awareness and funds to help digitize the migration archives called – SaveTheArchives.com.
What is Save The Archives?
Well, in order to preserve these archives sitting in dusty boxes in the basement of the IOM, we need to help raise the needed funds to hire the resources and equipment to digitize more than 200,000 archives – each representing a journey of a Greek that migrated to either Canada, Australia, the United States, South Africa or across Europe in pursuit of a better life.
Chances are, if you are Greek and first generation living in the countries mentioned above, your parents likely have an archive hidden within these boxes.
My Goal
To help digitize these records before it is too late. I am working with the IOM, the Ambassador of Canada to Greece, the Ambassador of Australia to Greece (Ms. Jenny Bloomfield) and Greek scholars from reputable institutions around the world to push the SaveTheArchives.com initiative forward.
It’s Not Just a Piece of Paper
I am very fortunate to have located my father’s entry archive from when he left Greece to arrive to Canada in the 1970s. Having this framed and in my office, it helps remind me of the sacrifices my parents made to come to an unknown country, start from scratch and raise their children. It represents everything I am today and how much I owe to them for putting me in the position that I am in. It represents a similar story that hundreds of thousands of Greek families around the world share in their journey to become successful and respected within their new communities.
With the generous donations from our friends around the world, we will achieve the modest €25,000 goal needed to get this process started.
George Stroumboulis launched the initiative with Former Ambassador to Greece, Robert Peck.
