Ioanna Fotopoulou: “I am struggling to leave this world in a better place than the one I was born in”

At only 26 years old, Ioanna Fotopoulou is already a known activist.

Ioanna Fotopoulou is a Greek social entrepreneur. After having finished her engineering studies, Ioanna obtained a Master of Arts in Economics and Politics. The young activist grew up in a small village located in Northern Greece, close to the city of Thessaloniki.

The Greek activist has been one of the thirty candidates selected in the contest of the Rising Star Program. This competition was organized by Cruger Cowne, a management agency, and One Young World, a British non-profit organization that organizes annual summits, where young talents, coming from companies, Non-Governmental Organizations, universities, and so one, are brought together to share their innovative ways of thinking, ideas, and solutions for the challenges that our world is facing in this 21st century. Also, within the summits, sustainable connections are made with this common desire of creating a positive change in the world. Nevertheless, Rising Star Program is first and foremost a competition, confronting ideas, therefore, the candidates had to be strong minded and competitive to make it to the last stage of the competition. Indeed, Ioanna states: ‘The competition was very difficult given the fact that it was receiving applications from social startups, and social endeavors on a worldwide level’.

On her life and matters

Between her missions as an engineer, and her activities as an activist, we asked Ioanna how she manages her time, question to which she declared: ‘Time is a weird thing to deal with when you do things you do not like. When you are passionate about your daily activities, then, time is rarely an issue. In addition, I am blessed enough to have understood this a long time ago, therefore, I tried somehow to merge my volunteer activity with my job and now I do what I love: I offer to the Greek society, and at the same time, I make a decent living out of these endeavors’.

Changing the world for a better place is both a motivation and a passion that the Greek activist carries since a long time. She had ‘this feeling for voluntarism’ since she was 12 years old. Ioanna goes deeper, while explaining her desire to have a positive impact on the world and change it: ‘The future of this earth, of this world, is not bound with our future. We, as humans, are just passing by from here. Yet, ancient Greeks had something that was called ‘histerofimia’, which means the ‘fame you obtain after death’. It is one of the biggest ideals my family raised me with. Therefore, I am struggling to leave my country, my community, this world a better place than I found it’.

Ioanna’s aspirations..

The enthusiastic activist shared with us the way she would like to see Greece within ten years: ‘I would like to see some reforms in the public sector that will render it easier to manage and more efficient from the service point of view. I need to see Greece going up to the scale of transparency’s International Index and the clientelistic relations to be minimised at least by 50% by then. Plus, I want, by that time, to have a new Constitution that is designed by the Greek citizens and not by some genius politicians behind some closed doors. I wish that, in 10 years from now, a democracy would be a crucial part of Greece’s reality and that we will start implementing Democracy from scratch’.

Ambitious, perseverant, and hardworking, many adjectives to describe the Greek Ioanna Fotopoulou. However, she would describe herself as ‘an eternal romantic’.