2020, what a year. To those of you who have followed our work, you will know that every year since 2016 we have organized a Watch Day in Greece, named after the World Monuments Fund’s Watch List, where the site Pavlopetri, which we are trying to safeguard, was included for two years.

After the official Watch designation ended, Watch Day continued. If you look at our previous posts you can see that each Watch Day was different, and in 2019 for the first time we included the screening of movies that deal with issues related to the protection of the marine environment.

Watch Day 2016
Watch Day 2017
Watch Day 2018
Watch Day 2019

2020 was the year of the global pandemic, and a Watch Day could not take place. However, our partners on the ground, started an online series of movie recommendations. Our message: Watch movies to honor Watch Day!

The selected movies are available online and they all fall under the concept, developed late in 2018, of a Pavlopetri Eco-Marine Film Festival. Check out our Publications section on our website, especially if you speak Greek, to see the coverage of the film festival in local media, it blew up.

For 2020, we stayed home to raise awareness about Pavlopetri 🙂

For 2021, let’s make our voices heard. Let’s increase pressure around the issue of physically protecting the site, with a boardwalk, parking lot, signage, etc. In a great breakthrough, the Greek Ministry of Culture promised this in 2019 at our Watch Day but they have not followed through yet.

Plans for a virtual event around Watch Day 2021 are brewing here at ARCH. If you want to be part of the “pressure campaign”, here is a first step you can take: Send us a short video or a short note on why you believe Pavlopetri needs to be saved. info@archinternational.org