As Greek Australians look to move past the devastating events of 2020, annual celebrations, that were once treasured community events, are finally able to resume.
The Kalymnian Brotherhood of Melbourne last week hosted their annual picnic, an event that was long missed following the COVID-19 restrictions last year.
“It’s fantastic. It’s nearly 12 months and we haven’t had any functions since last year, so it was a bit of a struggle,” Kalymnian Brotherhood President Jim Tseros said to The Greek Herald.
“We’ve got a clubhouse which continuously wore away whatever money we had in the account, but it was good to get back and try and raise some funds again to keep the club rolling.”
The Kalymnian Brotherhood of Melbourne is a non-for-profit organisation that holds multiple charity events each year, including car shows and dances.
“It’s a greater thing than just an internal Greek thing. It’s becoming more of just getting involved with other clubs and other nationalities and other multiculturalism,” Jim said.
“That’s the way the clubs are heading these days. It’s not like old school where just came out here and stuck to themselves, these days they’re trying to sort of branch out and do more charity work.”
Jim says however that despite all the charity work they do, they are not a charity organisation and aren’t entitled to any “survival funds” by the government, making it harder to keep the club rolling.
“There was a little bit of money in the account which basically got us through until now and hopefully now we don’t have to look back and just move forward.” Jim said.
The Kalymnian Brotherhood is planning to hold a function at the clubhouse in late February before preparations for Easter, which is expected to be much larger than last year, begins.
