About
Built with the people we serve, in Kypseli, Athens
A registered Greek civil-society organisation (Σωματείο Μη Κερδοσκοπικού Χαρακτήρα), founded in 2016, working with refugees and asylum seekers across Attica.
We run six structured programmes, two physical centres, and a forty-one-person team — almost half of whom came through our programmes as students or clients.
We are funded by individual donors (47%), foundations (31%), corporate partners (14%), and earned income from our adult-education centre (8%). We have never accepted government contracts that came with operational restrictions on who we serve.
Our story
We started with twenty-eight people and a kettle
Eleni Markatou had been giving informal Greek lessons in Eleonas since the spring of 2015, on plastic tables borrowed from the medical NGO next door. Hossein Karimi had arrived from Tehran a few months earlier and was translating Farsi to broken Greek for the same medical team.
They started co-teaching in September 2015. By March 2016 the foundation was registered and the Acharnon ground floor was leased. Today the team is forty-one people across two locations, with a 2025 operating budget of €1.94 million.
Timeline
Ten years, two buildings
- 2015Eleni Markatou begins informal Greek lessons in an Eleonas warehouse
- 2016Foundation registered; ground floor on Acharnon Street leased; first 28 students
- 2018Vocational Bridge launched with six employer partners
- 2020Children’s Learning Hub opens at Spaton 38, Pagrati
- 2022First five-year impact review published; Charity Navigator 4-star rating awarded
- 2024Stelios Philanthropic Foundation Award for Civil Society
- 2025217 adults placed in employment in a single year — a record
Recognition
Awards and press
Stelios Philanthropic Foundation Award
Award for Civil Society, 2024.
Kathimerini
“Ten Organisations Reshaping Greek Public Life”, 2024.
GIVE Greece
Transparency Honour Roll, 2023.
BBC Europe
Long-form documentary feature, “The Kypseli Classroom”, 2022.
Accredited and audited
- Charity Navigator 4-Star
- Civil Society Register #ΣΩΜ.41203
- GIVE Greece member
- GuideStar Platinum
- Grant Thornton audited
- GDPR-compliant donor data
Come and see the place
Reception is open Monday to Friday, 09:00–18:00, and Saturday mornings.