Stefanos Kamperis of Staramaki on Nature Based Solutions & building resilient social economies

02/29/24 • 33 min

"I've realised that being close to nature gives you a different understanding of what growth is, of what a meaningful life may be."

Is it possible to tackle climate change and soil-degeneration with a nature-based solution while at the same time building a resilient social economy for an existing remote community and for those that migrate there? Yes.

Staramaki is a Social Cooperative Enterprise based in Kilkis Greece, which produces straws from the stems of wheat as an alternative to plastic straws which, despite the ban, are still omnipresent and for paper straws that often contain harmful PFAs and are typically shipped in bulk containers (containing mostly air) from Asia.

"The wealth created by the company is distributed in an equal and fair way. The salaries of everybody in Staramaki is the same, no matter the position, no matter the experience."

Born out of a reaction to the Greek crisis and from a new perspective arising from moving back to his rural roots, this is the story of the impact Staramaki co-founder/manager Stefanos Kamperis and the like-minded collective that formed around a simple idea. The collective both set up a resilient NGO to tackle the rehousing and integration crisis stemming from the mass migration that at one point had 25,000 people walking barefoot through Kilkis village each day - and resulted in one of the most progressive organisations in Greece, currently producing over 3m natural straws per year.

"Without Impact Investing, it's almost impossible for a social enterprise in Greece to find the investment necessary for it to grow"

With social enterprises struggling to raise vital growth funding, we were delighted, along with our investors, to enable the highest funding round for a social enterprise in Greece to help Staramaki build resilience and acquire new machinery to expand production.

www.staramaki.gr

"It's something that money cannot buy. It's passion."

www.nestle.gr

https://www.nespresso.com/gr/en/

#Ikigai #valueeconomy #circulareconomy #naturebasedsolutions #socialenterprise #impactinvesting

Other useful impact industry resources:

Ellen Macarthur Foundation

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/

SDG Goals

https://sdgs.un.org/goals

Social Value International

https://www.socialvalueint.org/