A facebook group developed to help Greeks migrate to Australia has had an overwhelming response from people seeking support.

 The group, called Greek Australian Support Network, was developed by eight Victorians only two weeks ago and already has 1069 members (at time of print).

The group’s intent is to offer support, assistance and advice to all migrating Greeks. It provides a forum for people to advertise jobs, offer grass roots assistance like blankets, furniture for new arrivals, and accommodation.

Peter Kalliakoudis, one of the administrators of the group said Greek Australian Support Network is a “community based facebook group so all we can give is advice to our members and it’s something we are just trying to support fellow Greeks going through hardships”.

“All we tried to build here was a network between people looking for help we are just trying to be the medium form between coming and people’s support for fellow Greeks,” says Mr Kalliakoudis.

The group’s origin’s began after a facebook discussion on Peter’s homepage discussing the current crisis in the Hellenic Republic.

“When we saw the footage of Athens burning like that, it really struck us at the heart, and seeing it we knew we had to do something about it,” says Mr Kalliakoudis.

The eight people involved in the discussion are now the administrators of the group and they include: Anna Stergiouconstantakis; George Tsitsis; Sossa Gonzales; Pytheas Massalias; Antony Margetis; Petros Kosmopoulos; Stella Avgerinakis; as well as Mr Kalliakoudis. All administrators are from Melbourne.

Administrator Ms Stergiouconstantakis told Neos Kosmos that she has not only been overwhelmed by the response, but also overwhelmed by the support shown on the forum.

“It got to the stage where every couple of seconds we were getting requests to join the group,” says Ms Stergiouconstantakis.

Ms Stergiouconstantakis said the network has already been very successful in helping Greeks immigrate, and says “it shows the true philanthropic character of the Hellenes, the word comes from us and it shows on our wall”.