STORY OF MEANING
PLATEAU was founded in Athens on December 2008 between friends and associates sharing common sensibilities, principles, values and vision.
PLATEAU is constituted of people and the stories of meaning held by those people.
PLATEAU’s founders belong to a generation influenced by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent hope for a better and brighter future free of division or discrimination. The period afterward found these people becoming students of the universities, where this optimism flourished.
Some years later, as war and the destruction came to the Balkans, PLATEAU’s members, in cooperation with Greek and international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) became active in the area, assisting neighbors, friends, and the people of the Balkan Peninsula, to cope with the disasters.
In the context of this new reality another world appeared to them. That the extremes of difficulty, destruction, death, pain, misery, and poverty can exist alongside such supreme human values as selflessness, cooperation, and creativity. This contrast defined and characterized their new lives in humanitarian assistance and development cooperation.
During this time the eventual founders and members of PLATEAU came to know others in the field from organizations all over the world. They forged friendships, exchanged ideas, learned from each other, worked together, and shared hardships, fears, failure and success. Later the opportunity and responsibility arose to offer those services and apply those skills, developed in the Balkans, to people suffering in other parts of the world; in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Advances in communication technology however, made it possible for the friends to keep in contact and continue to share the lessons of their experience. Through such interaction they came to understand how much more easily cooperation and joint actions could be achieved in this new world. Their appreciation for the fragility and interdependence of life also continued to grow.
Over this period of several years the members accumulated substantial amounts of practical professional experience. This experience is especially concerned with: design, management and implementation of humanitarian and development actions and programs; contact and familiarity with donors and governments of beneficiary countries; cooperation with local communities and other international agencies, the United Nations and the international NGOs.
The friends, in parallel, having time to improve their professional and personal competence, continued their studies in progressive areas and subjects such as sustainable development, international relations, political economy, law, socio-economic studies at graduate, masters' and doctoral levels.
Capitalizing on the above mentioned extensive field experience, comprehensive knowledge of the subject of humanitarian aid and development cooperation, emerging technologies, a willingness to learn, sensitivity to and appreciation of beneficiary community needs, and contacts and established through fruitful cooperation with colleagues from other countries and organizations around the world, they made the decision to develop PLATEAU with a vision to become a platform of human contact for innovative and sustainable coordination, research and implementation.
