Beyond its community driven approach, Impact Hub Athens provides entrepreneurial support, tailored acceleration services, and capacity building programs empowering start-ups and organizations to scale their impact. As a vibrant coworking and events space, it also hosts changemakers driving positive transformation. With recognized expertise in rural innovation, ecosystem building and participatory engagement, it consistently champions sustainability, inclusiveness and collaboration as cornerstones of long lasting transformation.
A strong expertise in gender equality and non-discrimination
Impact Hub Athens brings strong expertise in gender equality and non-discrimination, supported by its formal Gender Equality Plan (2024–2027), which embeds gender-balanced leadership, anti-harassment protocols, inclusive policies, and continuous staff training.
The organisation has extensive experience designing safe, empowering environments through programmes such as Elephant Talk (youth empowerment against online gender-based hate and discrimination) and entrepreneurial initiatives for vulnerable women like Momentum, OpenBeehive, and YES ALLIANCE. IHA brings to Grapes of Change a strong values alignment, as well as a growing network of critical stakeholders and allies within the wine sector, and its solid expertise in BSO and entrepreneurial support.
Impact Hub Athens’ commitment to inclusion, gender equality, and safer environments
A recent example that reflects Impact Hub Athens’ commitment to inclusion, gender equality, and safer environments is Elephant Talk, a CERV-funded project tackling online gender-based hate speech.
The project mobilised youth workers and young people across Europe in gender-sensitive data collection, analysis and visualisation, addressing a phenomenon well-documented in national reports such as stophatespeech.eu/pdf/greece.pdf.
Impact Hub Athens hosted the international training programme for youth workers and advocacy professionals, equipping them with tools to identify, document and counter digital misogyny. We also convened a specialised focus group with the DIOTIMA Centre, one of Greece’s leading organisations on gender-based violence, to ensure that the project’s methods and messages were survivor-centred and aligned with expert guidance.
In Athens, we organised a large public dialogue event where young people, activists, educators, artists and members of the public discussed openly how gender-based hate speech is experienced and normalised online, how the “cycle of online hate” affects victims and bystanders, and how communities can reclaim digital spaces that empower rather than harm. The strong engagement showed the need for safe, inclusive environments where youth can speak without stigma.
The project produced an open access methodology, as well as a dedicated active webpage capturing its Research Results: stophatespeech.eu
Through Elephant Talk, Impact Hub Athens demonstrated its ability to combine youth empowerment, rights-based education and community dialogue, a capacity that directly strengthens our contribution to Grapes of Change.
Why does Grapes of Change matter?
At Impact Hub Athens, we’re committed to elevating underrepresented communities and empowering them through education, entrepreneurship, and inclusive support systems. Grapes of Change matters to us because it brings this mission into the wine sector, an industry where women’s voices and opportunities are still limited, and helps create safer, fairer, and more empowering pathways for all professionals.
6 wishes for a better wine industry
We envision a wine industry where:
- Gender-based violence, harassment and discrimination are eliminated, with clear zero-tolerance policies
- (Female) professionals feel empowered to report cases safely, with accessible support structures and trusted mechanismsGood practices and accredited standards for equality and workplace safety are widely adopted.
- DEI and gender-sensitive education are embedded across all levels of training in the sector.
- More women occupy leadership and decision-making roles, from vineyards to boards.
- The female perspective is visible, valued and communicated, shaping a more respectful, inclusive and innovative industry.
