Antonis schwarz: My hope to come clean out of this crisis

Published on April 4, 2014

AthensRe Start Up Europe!

“Why did I come to Greece am“Why did I come to Greece amid cri­sis? This is the most com­mon ques­tions I face when I tell peo­ple about me and my team’s pro­ject Vouli­watch. It has al­ready been a long jour­ney for me, but one that is far from being over.”  

Born in Ger­many, after his stud­ies in London and Madrid, An­to­nis de­cides in spring 2013 to reset­tle in Athens. The 26 year old founder, has pre­vi­ously worked for Ashoka, a global or­ga­ni­za­tion that sup­ports so­cial en­tre­pre­neurs, where he be­came in­ter­ested in help­ing scale suc­cess­ful so­cial busi­nesses from abroad to Greece. “After some re­search and dis­cus­sions, it emerged that par­lia­ment­watch, the on­line plat­form that en­ables cit­i­zens to ask di­rectly their ques­tions to deputies, would be a per­fect fit for such an un­der­tak­ing."  The rea­son is ev­i­dent, Greek pol­i­tics, is in tur­moil. In ac­cor­dance with July 2013 Eu­ro­barom­e­ter, 80% of the Greek cit­i­zens do not trust the po­lit­i­cal par­ties.  

Here is An­to­nis’ story: 

"Dur­ing my mas­ter stud­ies at IE Busi­ness School, in Madrid, I used my free time to plan my move to Greece. I wanted to re­turn to Greece to try and do my part to fight the cri­sis, which is, first and fore­most a cul­tural cri­sis. From my point of view, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion pre­sents a once in a life­time op­por­tu­nity to break up the rigid struc­tures that are drag­ging the coun­try ever deeper into a re­ces­sion.  

Young peo­ple, from my per­spec­tive, have a spe­cial role to play in this con­text. Be­sides being the new pre­cariat, due to the dis­as­trous labor mar­ket sit­u­a­tion, I be­lieve it is the his­toric role of young peo­ple to ques­tion the val­ues that have been put forth to them by the es­tab­lish­ment. Yet the ma­jor­ity of my gen­er­a­tion re­jects this role. We think it is safer not to re­sist, to do as we are told and to fol­low the path of oth­ers.  

Truth be told, the cri­sis reached a point where, at least in Greece, we can­not deny that we are liv­ing in a dooms day ma­chine.  I think the time has come to rise for my gen­er­a­tion and to raise our voices. This means to stop fol­low­ing the older gen­er­a­tion and to set out, which path we want to fol­low. In Greece we have a tra­di­tion of think­ing that po­lit­i­cal ac­tivism will lead to noth­ing. That the sys­tem is too strong. That being said, with vouli­watch, I want to give peo­ple hope that change is pos­si­ble and that the no­tion of fu­til­ity in pol­i­tics has to be over­come. This is in­deed a prob­lem not only lim­ited in Greece. Up to now many Greeks thought that the only pos­si­ble ways to have an im­pact is through vot­ing on na­tional elec­tions every four years, by using per­sonal con­nec­tions to reach power or even brib­ing of­fi­cials. Peo­ple need to re­al­ize that there is an­other path be­yond the bal­lot and that cor­rup­tion is not an op­tion. But for this to work, the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem has to ac­com­mo­date that cit­i­zens have a greater say in pub­lic mat­ters.

In­deed we are wit­ness­ing the emer­gence of a de­mo­c­ra­tic push not just in coun­tries of the Eu­ro­pean pe­riph­ery, but also in the core coun­tries, since it has be­come ev­i­dent to many that the sim­ple model of rep­re­sen­ta­tional democ­racy that has served the Eu­ro­pean coun­tries for a long time is out­dated. This be­comes es­pe­cially ap­par­ent in times of cri­sis like the ones we are liv­ing in right now.  

I know that what I am doing has not been tried be­fore in Greece and that the idea might fail. But I be­lieve it is worth the ef­fort for since we stop try­ing, we have al­ready failed. Vouli­watch is my hope to come clean out of this cri­sis. To work up and con­front our past and to start anew. The peo­ple of Greece de­serve this.”

An­to­nis is al­ready prepar­ing his new Athen­ian pro­ject, which con­sists in de­liv­er­ing free skate­board­ing lessons to teenagers.

Notes for the reader:

Vouli­watch.​gr of­fers Greek cit­i­zens the pos­si­bil­ity to ask pub­lic ques­tions to Greek MP’s and MEP’s, as well as well as crowd­sourc­ing cit­i­zen data for leg­is­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ashoka: "So­cial en­tre­pre­neurs are in­di­vid­u­als with in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to so­ci­ety’s most press­ing so­cial prob­lems. They are am­bi­tious and per­sis­tent, tack­ling major so­cial is­sues and of­fer­ing new ideas for wide-scale change."