Hello, my name is Chara Oikonomidou and I’d be glad to introduce myself and my engagement with Edgeryders. I am 25 years old, I have studied Business Administration and Management and I have a Masters in International Advertising. I consider myself as a huge fan of social media and I am passionate about young entrepreneurship and innovation. At the moment I am having an internship at Hub Vienna and my main responsibilities are on communication, social media and hosting.
This is how I got to know Edgeryders and got involved as an engagement manager, connecting with the community and spreading the word. When Alberto contacted me and talked to me about this platform I thought that it is a very big opportunity of sharing ideas and opinions around youth problems and thoughts. I come from Greece and I am a “professional immigrant” in Austria because my country couldn’t provide me a healthy start up in my “adult life”.
I know from inside what it means having transition problems from student life to the professional one. We face problems in political life, in getting into professional life, in fulfilling our dreams… I have the impression that everything in my country is falling apart and I have to do something about it, if us, the new generation, give up then we are almost lost. I keep saying to myself that the only way to make a change is to take action!
I am happy that through Edgeryders I can contribute by communicating all of my thoughts and supporting others and also exchange ideas and learn more about youth policy and peer-to-peer communication. My expectations from this platform is to see many young people from different countries engaged and connected. I would like to see more Greek people taking part because I believe that they have a lot to share and take back from the platform and the community of Edgeryders. At the end of the day, we all come through the same challenges and insecurities and if we want to make a change in our future we need to collaborate on this.
What I like the most about Edgeryders is that it covers a big range of interesting topics. For now I am very interested in this campaign “Making a Living”. Just today I was reading the mission brief on social innovation and I was impressed on how some young people deal with finding work: by creating work themselves. So, let’s connect and make a change 
You can read my transition story and if you’re not an Edgeryder yet sign up here and do get in touch by writing on my profile!
