We are members of various Greek grassroots initiatives and the festival is a self-organised and self-managed process. A meeting point for collectives and struggles to connect and share knowledge. Round 200 groups from all over Greece participate and hundreds of volunteers help organise. Participants vary from social clinics and solidarity pharmacies to time banks, social kitchens, traditional seed banks, social centres, eco-communities, cooperatives or exchange networks, including initiatives like the worker’s self-managed factory of Vio.Me. or the Kinisi 136 citizen water movement, amongst others. We want to share another face of Greece (one that doesn’t find it’s way into the media) and learn from other inspiring experiences.
After various years of austerity, people’s collective intelligence has produced alternative social and economic answers built on solidarity and collaboration. We want to share these with other countries and also learn from those that come here, with the objective of creating a better connected European network. Also, it’s easier for us to bring people to Greece that to attend ourselves the different European meetings.