As a grade school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But just recently he has seen something entirely different, something he believed was impossible in Greece: kids choosing through school wastebasket for food; clingy youngsters asking friends for leftovers; and an 11-year-old kid, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with hunger pains.

" He had eaten nearly nothing at home," Mr. Nikas said, being in his cramped school workplace near the port of Piraeus, a working-class suburb of Athens, as the sound of a dive rope skittered throughout the playground. He confronted Pantelis's parents, who were ashamed and embarrassed however admitted that they had actually not had the ability to find work for months. Their cost savings were gone, and they were residing on provisions of pasta and catsup.

" Not in my wildest dreams would I expect to see the situation we remain in," Mr. Nikas stated. "We have actually reached a point where kids in Greece are coming to school hungry. Today, households have troubles not only of employment, however of survival."

The Greek economy is in free fall, having diminished by 20 percent in the past 5 years. The joblessness rate is more than 27 percent, the highest in Europe, and 6 of 10 job candidates state they have not worked in more than a year. Those dry data are reshaping the lives of Greek households with kids, more of whom are reaching schools starving or underfed, even malnourished, according to private groups and the government itself.

Last year, an estimated 10 percent of Greek primary and middle school students suffered from what public health specialists call "food insecurity," implying they faced hunger or the risk of it, said Dr. Athena Linos, a teacher at the University of Athens Medical School who likewise heads a food help program at Prolepsis, a nongovernmental public health group that has actually studied the situation. "When it pertains to food insecurity, Greece has actually now fallen to the level of some African nations," she stated.

Unlike those in the United States, Greek schools do not provide subsidized lunchroom lunches. Trainees bring their own food or purchase products from a canteen. The cost has actually become insurmountable for some families with little or no earnings. Their difficulties have actually been intensified by new austerity steps demanded by Greece's financial institutions, consisting of greater electrical energy taxes and cuts in aids for big households. As an outcome, parents without work are seeing their savings and benefits rapidly vanish.

" All around me I hear kids stating: 'My parents do not have any cash. We don't know what we are going to do,'" said Evangelia Karakaxa, an active 15-year-old at the No. 9 junior high school in Acharnes.

Acharnes, a working-class town amongst the mountains of Attica, was dynamic with activity from imports until the recession eliminated thousands of factory jobs.

Now, numerous of Evangelia's classmates are frequently starving, she stated, and one boy recently fainted. Some kids were beginning to take for food, she included. While she does not excuse it, she comprehends their predicament. "Those who are well fed will never understand those who are not," she stated.

" Our dreams are crushed," included Evangelia, whose parents are jobless however who is not in the same alarming situation as her peers. She paused, then continued in a low voice. "They say that when you drown, your life flashes prior to your eyes. My sense is that in Greece, we are drowning on dry land."

Alexandra Perri, who works at the school, stated that a minimum of 60 of the 280 trainees experienced poor nutrition. Kids who once possessed sweets and meat now broach consuming boiled macaroni, lentils, rice or potatoes. "The least expensive stuff," Ms. Perri stated.

This year the variety of malnutrition cases jumped. "A year earlier, it wasn't like this," Ms. Perri, stated, fighting back tears. "What's frightening is the speed at which it is occurring."

The government, which initially dismissed the reports as exaggerations, just recently acknowledged that it needed to deal with the problem of poor nutrition in schools. However with top priorities placed on repaying bailout funds, there is little cash in Greek coffers to cope.

Mr. Nikas, the principal, stated he knew that the Greek government was laboring to fix the economy. Now that talk of Greece's exiting the euro zone has disappeared, things look better to the outside world. "But tell that to the family of Pantelis," he stated. "They do not feel the improvement in their lives."

In the family's dark home near the school, Themelina Petrakis, Pantelis's mother, opened her fridge and cupboards one recent weekend. Inside was little more than a few bottles of catsup and other dressings, some macaroni and leftovers from a meal she had actually gotten from the city center.

The family was doing well and was even helping others in need until in 2015. The Petrakises were able to manage a large apartment with a flat-screen TELEVISION and a PlayStation.

Then her husband, Michalis, 41, was laid off from his shipping task in December. He said the business had actually not paid his earnings for 5 months before that. The couple could no longer afford rent, and by February they had actually lacked cash.

" When the principal called, I had to inform him, 'We don't have food,'" stated Ms. Petrakis, 36, cradling Pantelis's head as he cast his eyes to the ground.

Mr. Petrakis stated he felt emasculated after repeatedly failing to discover brand-new work. When food for the family ran low, he stopped eating almost completely, and rapidly lost weight.

" When I was working last summertime, I even got rid of excess bread," he stated, tears streaming down his face. "Now, I sit here with a war going through my head, attempting to figure out how we will live."

When the cravings comes, Ms. Petrakis has a solution. "It's easy," she said. "You get hungry, you get lightheaded and you sleep it off."

A 2012 Unicef report revealed that among the poorest Greek households with children, more than 26 percent had an "economically weak diet plan." The phenomenon has actually struck immigrants hardest however is spreading quickly amongst Greeks in metropolitan locations where one or both parents are effectively completely jobless.

In rural areas, individuals can at least grow food. But that is insufficient to eliminate the problem. An hour's drive northwest of Athens, in the industrial town of Asproprigos, Nicos Tsoufar, 42, looked vacantly ahead as he sat in the intermediate school that his 3 children attend. The school gets lunches from a program run by Prolepsis, the public health group. Mr. Tsoufar said his children frantically required the meals.

He has actually not found work for 3 years. Now, he said, his family is surviving on what he called a "cabbage-based diet," which it supplements by foraging for snails in nearby fields. "I know you can't cover dietary basics with cabbage," he stated bitterly. "However there's no option."

The federal government and groups like Prolepsis are doing what they can. Last year, Prolepsis began a pilot program supplying a sandwich, fruit and milk at 34 public schools where majority of the 6,400 households participating said they had actually experienced "medium to severe appetite."

After the program, that portion dropped to 41 percent. Funded by an $8 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, an international philanthropic organization, the program was broadened this year to cover 20,000 children at 120 schools.

Konstantinos Arvanitopoulos, Greece's education minister, stated the government had actually secured European Union funding to supply fruit and milk athens to Mycenae in schools, and vouchers for bread and cheese. It is also working with the Greek Orthodox Church to supply countless care plans. "It is the least we can do in this tough financial situation," he said.

Mr. Nikas, the principal at 11-year-old Pantelis's school, has taken matters into his own hands and is arranging food drives at the school. He is mad at what he views as more comprehensive disregard of Greece's problems by Europe.

" I'm not stating we should simply wait on others to assist us," he said. "However unless the European Union acts like this school, where families help other families due to the fact that we're one huge household, we're done for."