We Love Lindos the Chroma Beach Party

Last week I saw colourful party happen on the beach in Lindos. The photos were amazing with a mixture of ages all having fun. And all of it in aid of a wonderful project to build a playground and park for the children of Lindos. I know about the Holi festival of colour that takes place in India every year to celebrate the beginning of spring and victory of good over evil and wanted to know what had brought the colours to Lindos. I spoke to Vanessa who runs the team behind the event to find out more.

Why a Chroma Event?

We saw the colour events going on around Europe and saw how uplifting they looked. We loved that we could finally do something in the daytime that didn’t revolve around alcohol where everyone from toddlers to grandparents had such a wonderful time.  The event had such a happy and positive vibe.  All about community, togetherness….not about what designer everyone was wearing, no arrogance, just lovely.

What is We Love Lindos?

We Love Lindos is a charity run by local volunteers to improve life for everyone living in the village of Lindos. Each year we raise money to buy bin liners and light bulbs for the village and to hire extra cleaning people. 

Now we are raising extra funds to go towards architects to do a study of the area for their next project, a park and play area, to present to the south Aegean mayor.

Who is We Love Lindos?

I started it myself 4 years ago but gave up because I had no help and then 2 years ago a group of lindians found me and said we need to keep it going and they wanted to join and we received our legal papers for the official group 1 year ago

We have over 100 members now and we also get support from the My Pefkos kids, but the board is 7 people and we basically do everything 

The board of We Love Lindos are?

• Vanessa Pappas Houiris
• Dinos Houiris
• Eleni Mouselli 
• Despina Mouselli 
• Stefanos Bakas 
• Tsambikos Zalavras 
• Nikos Savvaidis

If you see them around the village say hi.

What is the dream?

Our dream is to create a haven for the children of Lindos ….an area with parks, gardens and playgrounds for different ages. The extra funds raised now are going towards architects to do a study of the area to present to the south Aegean Mayor.

Who will benefit from the new play area?

There are approx 300 children aged 1 to 18 years old who will benefit from this directly. Children come into the village from Psaltos, Vlicha and Pefkos and spend all day here while their parents are working in the summer. Many others come from Kalathos and other villages too. This doesn’t include the hundreds of extra children every day in summer who are here on holiday every day.

Lindos also has the primary school for the area with about 150 children who will benefit as they are only allowed to use the school premises during school hours.

They have no park or playground area of their own. The children get yelled at by shop owners not to play outside the shops, by homeowners saying they are making noise, by umbrella owners who don’t leave any space on the beach without an umbrella. Unable to use the school other than school hours with the football pitch is so far and there’s nothing there for them and no shade. They are forced to play at the back Amphitheatre which is illegally filled with cars and the mums all complain to me that they are falling on the hard cement breaking arms and legs and that one day one of the cars will run them over. I’ve spoken to the police but they are not much help.

Ava Houiris, who helps the team out with PR, said:

I’d never been to a Colour Party before…had never heard of such a thing. It was absolutely fantastic. 

My friends and I, with our children beaming, danced for hours. There was such a wonderful, vibrant atmosphere and everyone just had fun dancing their socks off. There was hardly any drinking even, the colour explosions were too exciting, we didn’t need alcohol! 

The children said it was the best day ever and I have to agree. Roll on next year so we can do it again and get even more people to support our wonderful cause. Children’s playground, we’re coming to get you!

What’s next?

These events are exhausting to organise and the team are done for this year but they really like the idea of doing the Chroma Event again next year and making it an annual event.

Thank you so much for your support !!! We are determined to make Lindos the diamond it deserves to be !

To find out more about the group check out their website www.welovelindos.com and follow them on social media on Facebook and Instagram

Photographs courtesy of Mike Heard who has kindly given us permission to use them here.

Remember to leave only footprints and take only photographs.

The colour was all ecologically sound and safe for children as it was made with corn flour and food colouring.