THE NID PROJECT
Feeding is a basic right that all people deserve to enjoy. However, today a big amount of people who are forced to immigrate to foreign countries are not able to cover this need. The N.I.D. project being sensitized from the hardships which refugees face, it’ s here to offer its help and services to those people who enter Greece. Our goal is to solve the problem of their feeding so as to give them the opportunity to gain more time thinking of how they will manage the rest of theirs problems.
A story of Nadia (Konstantina), Ioanna & Dionysia…
From the very start until the final shape of our challenge!
All started in a small basement at Hill Street, where Panteio’ s studio exists. We were all curious about what we would face at this new lesson called “Social issues and business responsibility” or as CMC[1] students call it “Dare to Challenge”. After a warm welcome from our professor mrs. Betty Tsakarestou, she started explain us how this workshop would work. By the end of the lesson’ s presentation everyone knew that we would enter in a whole new “world”, beyond the orders of classical University. Our aim was to create a real start-up business in order to solve a social problem. Of course it wasn’t an individual operation but a team work. After all, that was the spirit of the course · to learn cooperate and solve challenges. The excitement was huge so every single student begun working on this issue.
Our team, consisting from Ioanna Pante, Dionysia Konstantakopoulou and me, was almost created with a glance to each other. Afterthought, the hard work started so as to find our challenge. So many ideas crossed our minds but we set as goal to work on a case that it would “touch” and stimulate our interest so as to give our all to it. Some days after the first lesson at the Dare to Challenge and while we were looking for an idea, I have had a conversation with an aunt of mine. She works at a well-known hotel chain and as I am interesting in the domain of tourism, we talked about how hotels operate. From this talk with my aunt I made a “disturbing” ascertainment. Every single day a huge amount of cooked meals, that are not consumed, end up to trash. I shared this fact with the rest team and what all of us thought is that nowdays, where many people face economical and social problems, children pass out at schools from starvation and refugees enter our country having nothing and no hopes, it’s a big irony so many food to be thrown away instead of be given to those who need it. So, in this way our team discovered the challenge that it wanted to solve.
Our project based on making a cooperation with hotels — maybe and bakeries, too- of Athens city so as to take the food that wasn’t consumed (not the leftovers) and spread it to people that don’t have the opportunity to cook themselves. At first point, we made a research according to if there is already similar movement in Greece. Then, we worked on how we could approach the hotels which would cooperate with us and finally, we tried to find out in which ways we would achieve the distribution of the collected food, as long as the frequency of it. In parallel, our team was looking for similar examples in other countries so as to learn the steps we need to make for succeed in our effort to solve this crucial social problem. Thereafter, it was about time to name our start-up. We decided to use the first letters of our names and while we were experimenting in different kinds of combinations, we came across N.I.D. What we liked about this order was that when someone hears it, thinks of the word NEED. So here it is … The N.I.D. project.
With the guidance of mrs. Tsakarestou we continued preparing and developing our project in order to reach in a spot that we could “bring it in life”. Although, the first obstacle appeared. A member of the team discovered an organization that has already done what we wanted to achieve, not only in Athens but generally in the whole country. As long as we couldn’t find any spot to diverge from it, we should change direction. It was a very difficult moment for us because the days went by and the time was little for an entire change. What is more, we had found the domain that we wanted to work at. With the help of our professor we were able to see different prospects of the project that we could use so as to make a difference. And we did it! Our final aim was to create an organization that would bring close young people with same dreams for making a better place the world we live. In cooperation with the youth from the worldwide, charitable, non-profit foundation (which will equip us with its cuisine), we will prepare meals, in a stable base, in order to delivered them to housing areas of immigrants. The movement may collaborate with other volunteers, too. It’s a youth innovation which want to provide that hope still exists today in Greece of crisis and to highlight that seeing the problem face to face is the first step to destroy it. As it is already mentioned, our goal is not just to offer a charity help but to diminish one of immigrants’ problems so as to give them more time to manage the rest of them. These people don’t need alms, they need supporters who will understand their pain and they will help them become strong again.
Of course, creating a start-up business is not an easy job. It is not just theory but also actions. It needs well programming and interior management. It is a big step by step procedure, in order to be sure that everything will function as it should. At this point, very useful and helpful were the OpenIdeo resources, such as UXMAP, Prototyping and Brainstorming tools etc, which guide us in a way to learn how a new, young, entrepreneur should manage its thoughts and creativity.
Until this moment we hadn’t achieved to apply our project, but we did make a big progress and learn useful advice from our professor, that help us to build a “strong” start-up. In a first plan, we want the public to be informed for our actions, through our facebook page “ The NID project”, come in contact with us and contribute to create a big community that will assist to solve this challenge. Make our challenge, your challenge,too! Spread food to those who need it, spread happiness, spread courage!
Dare to Challenge…Dare to help…Dare to solve!
Signed by
The NID project
[1] Communication Media & Culture Studies, Panteion University
