Mimi Hapig

Mimi Hapig is Co-Founder and Project Leader of Habibi.Works. The lack of dignified, sustainable responses from the European governments towards the so called “refugee crisis” drove her to quit her position as project manager in Germany in 2016 to move to Greece, where she has been dedicating all her time and energy to the creation of a different approach towards the challenges people in this context experience. Habibi.Works Soup and Socks e.V. was founded in 2015 to set a sign of solidarity with people fleeing their countries and to improve their situation. People who came to Europe as refugees were treated either as victims or as a thread, both of which is wrong and shortsighted. Over the course of only 7 months, our project developed from a mobile soup kitchen to the permanent makerspace Habibi.Works. Habibi.Works is an extraordinary maker space for products and perspectives in the north of Greece. In a context in which sustainable responses are rare, the project provides platforms for education, empowerment and encounter for refugees and members of the local society.