Why Change needs Community - How Communities such as Habibi.Works and the Global Innovation Gathering Strive to Create Impact

Through the lens of Mimi Hapig, co-founder of Habibi.Works and Fadia Elgharib, Community Manager of Global Innovation Gathering, we explore the essential role of community in driving systemic change. Join us for this 15 minute talk as we share mistakes, learnings, insights and best practices when working towards community driven innovation and transformation. 

Habibi.Works is an "intercultural maker-space" in the North of Greece. The project features 11 different workshop areas, from a community kitchen, a wood workshop, a bicycle repair workshops, up to laser cutting and 3D printing. Given its unique location close to one of several refugee camps in the region, it is tailored to provide a platform for people from diverse backgrounds to create solutions themselves: People living in refugee camps as well as members of the local Greek communities can use the space free of charge to gain or share a skill, repair what needs mending or create something according to their own needs and ideas. Throughout the years, Habibi.Works has grown a community of thousands of individuals from countless different countries joining forces to show that the phenomenon of forced migration and the impact it has on people's lives can in fact be approached in solidarity, with respect, towards the creation of more agency and dignity. 

The Global Innovation Gathering (GIG) is a vibrant, diverse community of innovative hubs, makerspaces, hackerspaces and other grassroots innovation communities alongside individual innovators, makers, technologists and changemakers. It's vast experience of creating and maintaining connections with people across huge distances is all the more important in our globalised, digitalised world.