Rummikub and Movie night.
This morning we had a Rummikub session with some of the homeless people. The nice thing about Rummikub is that it is language-independent and therefore not threatening to the visitor.
Many people find it difficult to start a conversation in English or Russian, but once they’re here, the game is running, then that threshold disappears automatically, and you can, in a relaxed way, have a good conversation about things that do matter, and then try to help them a little bit further. From that relationship, you can move forward amazingly quickly. Good to see and to do, it costs just a little, plenty of results. (By the way, E is very fanatic during this game… lol, M got beaten up pretty badly this time)
In the evening, we had a movie night. We run these a few times a month and the target group for this is students. The loneliness among these Expats can be enormous (far from home, far from their own culture) and in this way we offer them a kind of “home” feeling.
In this way, it’s a lot of fun, but also serious conversations arise quickly. On the other hand, we simply offer them a warm place where they can feel at home for a while. We tell them where everything is, and then they can go into the kitchen themselves, grab a bag of chips from the table, feel at home. Sounds simple, (it is) but you have to do it. The investment is around 25 euros (Do you want to help? Click) but if you see what happens in one evening, or what comes out afterward… its huge. Fun to do, high results. What else do you want?
Tomorrow we go to the Russian-speaking church, then to the food bus, and then we have an appointment with one of the homeless people to see if we can help him a little further (or not).