School children on the island of Kythera in Greece will now be learning about Kytherians who immigrated to Australia as part of a new education program.
The oral history project, called Kythera: Stories that Build Bridges, will be incorporated into the curriculum for students from kindergarten to high-school, as they learn the stories of migrants who sought their fortunes in Australia.
80,000 Australians have ancestral ties back to Kythera, so the connection between the two holds a special place in Greece’s history of migration.
Ambassador to Greece Alison Duncan attended a signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Mayor of Kythera, Efstratios Charchalakis, and the Director for Secondary Education for Piraeus, Dr Dionysios Anastasopoulos.
A second stage of development and implementation of the project is now underway, which is said to include interviews with Kytherians who migrated to Australia, the creation of a digital oral history archive, lifelong learning for educators, collaborative projects between Greek students and possibly with students in Australia.
The program is supported by the Greek Association for Oral History, the Hellenic Open University’s Postgraduate Program of Public History, the Kytherian Association of Athens, the Society of Kytherian Studies, and the Kythera Local Archive.
There has been a rise of interest for the history of Kytherian migration, with not only this new education project, but also plans for the creation of a Museum of Kytherian Migration by the Friends of Museums of Kythera with support from the Municipality of Kythera, that will be established under the guidance of the Australian Embassy.
