The Self-Help Promotion Program is a program of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.P.Th), it operates with the funding of the Ministry of Health and the cooperation of OKANA and is housed in the Vardari area.
The main axis of the Program's operation is the support of people who face a problem of addiction to legal and illegal substances as well as their family and friends. The Program is open and all its services are provided free of charge. The main goal of the Program is to support people with an addiction problem based on the principles of self-help/mutual help.
The proposal of the Self-Help Promotion Program for addiction recovery and social integration places particular emphasis on the planning and development of collective actions related to the history, culture and local characteristics of the societies in which it operates. One such example is the "Neighborhood Group of Vardari", where program members, staff, volunteers and partners in the social field work together to highlight the historical memory of the legendary area of Vardari. The main goal of the group is to reconnect its members with their social space, the implementation of small-scale interventions to improve the image of the degraded Vardari, the cooperation with other agencies and collectives of the city, as well as the reflection on the future of the area of Vardaris.
One of the current actions of the "Vardaris Neighborhood Group" is the revival of the history of the area through the creation of a series of murals in the Vardari area. Already, in October 2020, the first mural was painted, in collaboration with the artistic group "UrbanAct", on Odysseos Street, which depicts the tobacco factory of the Regie Ottoman Tobacco Monopoly Company built in 1884 at the beginning of today's Lagada Street, point in which he was.
The second mural that began to be implemented on Sunday 28/02 and will be completed on Friday 05/03, on Michail Kalou Street, seeks to pay tribute to one of the most important and once populous communities of Thessaloniki, the Jewish, for the tragic consequences suffered by its population during the Second World War. The reason for this topic was the group's preoccupation with the history of the Jewish community due to the proximity of Vardar to the Jewish slum of Rezi Vardar and its proximity to the slum of Baron Hirs.
The mural is a symbolic composition of places, people and events inspired by photographic material of the time and includes seven consecutive images. The narrative begins with Baron Hirsch's Settlement during World War II. Here is an image that refers to the dramatic events of "Black Saturday". The third and fourth shows depict the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws with the depiction of three children with the distinctive star on their lapels and the entrance from the Hirsh Ghetto. The last images refer to the departure of the "death trains" from the Old Railway Station to the concentration camps. Wanting to emphasize the innocence of the victims, the protagonists of the narrative are children.
The mural is hosted on a licensed wall of the OSE, in the eastern enclosure of the New Railway Station, where the Rezi Vardar district was located. The artistic supervision of the mural has been undertaken by the "UrbanAct" group and is being implemented by the street artist Same 84. The project is being carried out with the support of Action Aid, in the context of the "SKG in action" competition, in which the "Vardaris Neighborhood Group" participated » with this sentence, winning first place. The historical documentation for the content of the mural was done by the historian-researcher, Andreas Assaël, and the historian-archaeologist and member of "dot2dot", Vassiliki Kartsiaklis. In addition, the support of Heinrich Böll, Scaffolding Astir, Mateco, Kunst Design Studio as well as the businesses of the area, Anatolia Hospitality, Kouliga and Pistaria "The Corner" is important.
After the lifting of the measures to manage the covid-19 pandemic, the "Vardari Neighborhood Group" plans to organize an open event at the site of the mural, with invited representatives from the city's Israeli community, as well as others directly related/ es with the specific topic.