by Areti Vassou
Non-Profit Organization
Social Hackers Academy is the first tech education school in Athens for vulnerable groups.
Today there are 62,000 refugees permanent located in Greece. Due to the economic crisis, Greece is one of the least prepared in Europe to deal with this stream of people. Currently, basic necessities are financially covered in a great amount by government organizations and NGOs. But very little money is invested in sustainable solutions to the arising issue of formal education and skills training. Social Hackers Academy was founded to fill in the gap of education and skills training.
September of 2017 was the Social Hackers Academy starting point. The SHA launched a code school to teach students how to become web developers. The main goal is to provide an opportunity and a path out of the camps and towards a dignified, financially independent life.
The Team
Damianos Vavanos
Co-Founder & CEO
Damianos’ background is in Digital Marketing and Operations and has taken the role of Director. He’s worked in different NGOs all his life and recently he was working with Solidarity Mission as a Digital Marketing Consultant. Right before embarking on the Social Hackers Academy project he was traveling the world while building his businesses. Read more at 
Chris Owen
Co-Founder & CTO
Chris’s background is in Computer Science with several years professional experience working for start-ups, international companies and freelancing. Most recently he was working for The Guardian as part of their engineering team. Chris has taken on the role of CTO and deals more with the day to day running of the school. Read more at 
Michael Thomas
Co-Founder & Investor
Michael is a US-based entrepreneur and journalist who originally laid the groundwork that the organization is built on. Having spent times in refugee camps as a journalist he gained vital knowledge for the project and developed the first concept for the code school as it exists today. In the past, Thomas has worked in San Francisco working on his own start-up. As a successful journalist and storyteller, Michael has written for Fast Company and The Atlantic. Read more at 
Social Hackers Academy The Team
Mission
We work with the most vulnerable groups in society by empowering them through technology education and job placement.This results in their integration into society.
Goals
🙂 Our vision is to create a Solidarity World
🙂 We want to disrupt the status quo in education and entrepreneurship by educating and integrating disenfranchised groups
🙂 Our primary aim is economic sustainability without profit making
How to get involved
Want to learn how you can participate in Social Hackers Academy? Here is how:
