Gelly Aroni is the Head of the Unit for Integration and Support of Unaccompanied Minors in the General Secretariat for Vulnerable Persons and Institutional Protection in the Ministry of Migration & Asylum in Greece. She was actively involved in the establishment and has been the Head of the Department for the Coordination and Monitoring of the Refugee Education of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs (2016-2020). Since 2020 she is working as an expert and a trainer in the European Wergeland Center’s programme “Schools for All – Integration of Refugee Children in Greek Schools”.
Gelly has extensive experience as a Physical Education teacher in Intercultural Schools (1998-2016) where she used cooperative games to promote, through active participation and collaborative learning, the principles, content, and values of Democracy and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE). Since March 2013 she is the Coordinator for Greece and expert on the projects “Living Democracy” and “CORE” (Children of Refugees in Education). She has facilitated workshops for Arigatou International on Intercultural and Interfaith Programmes for Ethics Education in Europe, Asia and Africa. Since 2011 she has been working as a teacher trainer for the Council of Europe. She has authored, among others, “Learning to Play Together”, a manual in Good Practices Series of LTLT on the application of the Intercultural and Interfaith Programme for Ethics Education in Physical Education and coauthored the manual “31 Basic Activities’ handbook: A useful educational tool for refugee reception in classrooms, schools, and communities”.