Participation in the community mapping workshop in Kallithea, Aitoloakarnania

The Mitato of Amorgos had a wonderful and creative start to 2024! We had the opportunity to take part in the highly interesting Community Mapping Workshop that was organised by Youth Active Minds  and Boulouki teams in Kallithea, Aitoloakarnania, Greece, from 2 to 7 January 2024. For four days, we worked with an active team of young people, of various geographical and scientific backgrounds, and we discovered one more beautiful corner of Greece.

The Workshop was part of a wider project of reviving the walking route that linked Kallithea, Aitoloakarnania, with Proussos, Evrytania, an important commercial, pilgrimage and educational passage in the past. The path was rendered obsolete when the road was opened in the 1980s and the wild, lush landscape eliminated most of its traces. The Youth Active Minds team located and cleared a large part of the path the weeks prior to the Workshop and so this particular project focused on the cultural axis of reviving the route and the active participation of the local community in doing so. To this end, a series of theoretical and practical steps was followed.

On the first day of the Workshop, the activities aimed at bonding the team and presenting a theoretical introduction to concepts such as cultural landscape and community mapping. Coordination was realised by Panagiota Karametou from the team of Youth Active Minds and the lectures were presented by Georgia Kanellopoulou and Grigoris Koutropoulos from the team of Boulouki.

On the second day, the team of Boulouki presented community mapping projects that have been completed in other areas, in order to complete a more concrete framework of working goals and results. In the afternoon of the same day, the working team met with residents of the area of Kallithea and worked together on the base of a satellite image of the path under study. Among others, insights on the history of the route were given by the last muleteer alive, a former pupil of the Katsambios School in Proussos, who had to follow the route in order to go to school, a merchant who keeps trade and transportation documents dating as far back as in 1939, the current owner of the former inn in Kallithea, as well as other residents, each of whom had their own memories from the path to share.

On the third day, supported by unexpectedly excellent weather in the heart of the continental winter, the team hiked part of the path, passing by points of interest that had been identified during the meeting with the residents the previous day, such as two inns. The route was registered on the map and several points of interest were surveyed. In the afternoon, the team gathered the notes of the morning walk and a conversation took place based on the impressions from the route, as well as their correlation with the information noted by the residents the previous day.

On the fourth day, the team drove to Proussos, Evrytania, the end of the route under study, passing by some more points of interest, such as the old watermill. In the afternoon, the conversation was focused on merging the impressions and information gathered and deciding on the following steps in planning the cultural route.

Apart from the thorough educational process and specialized training in the field of planning a cultural route, we were happy to experience the unique hospitality of the organizers, the delicious meals prepared by Alexandros Karagiorgos (Youth Active Minds) with the help of volunteers, and getting to know Yamochori, an open space in the beautiful surroundings of Makria Longa, near Kallithea, where the team of Youth Active Minds promotes an alternative model for education, cooperation and coexistence with nature.

We warmly thank the organizers for their generous hospitality and the experiences we shared and we will be happy to meet again in following projects!