Maryam Rezaei
Chrissoula Manolakaki
Panos Chreppas
Stamatis Tsagias
Asimeni TountaSotiris Petropoulos
How many people do we know who have all the credentials and have built the foundations to live a “perfect” life, a life of comfort and luxury but CHOOSE a path of giving, and sharing their knowledge to built a better environment? Hopefully I am lucky enough to have met quite a few and Sotiris Petropoulos is one of them! As soon as you meet him and within a few minutes, you know that he is a person and a professional you can trust and his every word counts! Sotiris is a kind and polite soul, to the point and precise, his smiling eyes glow with zeal and passion for what he does… Can you picture children receiving a gift and how thrilled they get? Well that’s exactly what he looked like when talking about their cause, HIGGS… the only difference is that he is the one giving the gift!
As a young boy, Sotiris always remembers himself having a sensitivity towards the environment and wanting to take care of it! He started from the age of 10 with his other class mates to clean the playground and as if that wasn’t enough he also stood in front of the whole school and informed them all, of their actions to inspire them also to do the same! Even though having such a beautiful giving heart and a sense of cause, he was inspired in his senior years at school by a ship merchant’s presentation and so he was accepted at the Shipping, Trade and transport of the University of Aegean. He was, as you can imagine, very active in the student communities and many environmental initiatives while he was there. Trying to figure his next steps, he started to understand that shipping was not all he had anticipated and much was missing. So, turned towards academia and started his masters International Political Economy at University of Warwick. Having chosen academia and participated in many research programs at the Institute of International Economic Relations, he starts his PhD focusing on Regionalism in the Developing World, at the Harokopio University. During his PhD studies, he came across the Civil Society and the world of NGO’s. Since 2009, he has been focusing on the NGO ecosystem, specifically through the research program “Thales-Evaluation of Greek NGOs”, where they created a credibility index in reviewing NGO’s and their performance. In addition, he has acted as Senior Consultant on International Donors Programs at Ernst & Young.
In 2012, he started organizing a series of capacity-building seminars directed to organizations throughout Greece. Having been enchanted by so many inspiring people giving their 100% and with the help of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, He founded HIGGS. Where they act as an incubator and accelerator for NGO’s. In short…they are an NGO taking care of other NGO’s; through events, workshops and educational seminars they help NGO’s to stand stronger on their feet and to be more organized…!
Sotiris Petropoulos is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of the Peloponnese and no matter what he does, it’s always about trying to be as helpful as possible by sharing his knowledge and know-how! His politeness and soft explaining tone makes everything so simple and easy… gives you the confidence and safety to keep fighting for your cause!
https://higgs3.org
