Impact Hub: The Year That Was

Exclusive Interview

Impact Hub is a global network that offers a wide variety of interesting projects for people of different professions and organizations, and brings a common workplace and space to its members. From Amsterdam to Singapore or from Johannesburg to Tbilisi, Impact Hubs can be found in over 100 cities around the world, with more than 20,000 members. It’s a place for enthusiastic, motivated individuals who are ready to share their experience to create a better tomorrow, who want to influence and have an impact on society development in any sphere, be it their city or their country. Impact Hub members benefit from a global community that brings guidance and access to resources, inspiration and collaboration opportunities which are shared through all the Impact Hubs worldwide for a growing positive effect on the world.

It’s fair to say that, since it opened, Impact Hub Tbilisi has made quite an impact. GEORGIA TODAY sat down with Ketevan Ebanoidze, one of the founders, to pick her brain on the year that was.

Not long after opening, she told GEORGIA TODAY that their goal was for Impact Hub Tbilisi to be “a place where new ideas are born, not just a venue or a space where you can simply work. We’re trying to connect all our members with each other and maximize the contribution of every member to the hub through the generation of new ideas and projects. We want to contribute to the process of civil society development, and we think that Impact Hub Tbilisi is an open and transparent place for that.” One year later, we asked her if she felt they’d achieved this goal.

“Soon after opening, we realized that we had to work not only on promoting Impact Hub Tbilisi, but also on the concept of co-working itself, as working in an open space together with a diverse group of people is quite new for Georgians. If we compare the statistics of our members a year ago with the status quo, we can see a huge difference. For the most part, during the first several months of operation we had 70% international members; today, though, it’s the opposite: you will see even more Georgians than foreigners working at Impact Hub. So, one thing, though not the only one, that we are proud of is our successful promotion of the benefits of co-working in the local community. We are setting an example of how working together can lead to successful collaboration opportunities”.

How does Impact Hub work towards helping the local community and fostering inclusive development?

We decided that we wanted to contribute to the development of social entrepreneurship in our country. To that end, we started to explore different kinds of programs and projects that Impact Hubs all around the world were implementing: we found the Social Impact Award (SIA), an international program initiated by Impact Hub Vienna, to be the most interesting. The program aims to promote social entrepreneurship among youth, and is the best tool for the development and implementation of social business ideas. The Social Impact Award is run by 18 countries and is a 10-month educational program with different stages. First, we held an all-inclusive and open series of workshops that were attended by over 200 students, after which the participants and non-attendees alike could submit their project proposals. Seven teams were then selected, consequently undergoing a very intensive incubation period between June and July under the tutelage of very experienced and qualified mentors, allowing them to develop prototypes of their projects. Finally, the jury narrowed down their finalists to three winners, who received not only a monetary prize but also the opportunity to attend the SIA summit, which brings together all the winners from each of the 18 countries. We are very proud of our winners, whose amazing ideas are dealing with pressing social issues and presenting very innovative solutions to solving these problems.

Is your membership characterized by a distinct demographic or have you been able to involve and attract old and young generations alike?

Our community actually consists of a wide-ranging age group: from students all the way to people in their sixties, so it’s definitely not just the youth getting involved with Impact Hub. We try to engage with different channels to reach a broader audience: we’re very active on social media, as well as on mainstream media and have built up an extensive contact database who are informed in a monthly newsletter about the latest happening at Impact Hub.

We have a diverse events calendar that might be interesting for any age group. For instance, last month we started a new series of events called “Meet the Ambassador”. These events involve the heads of diplomatic missions to Georgia being invited to Impact Hub and being given the floor for an informal interactive session with youth and all other interested people. As our first guest speaker, we had the honor to host Justin McKenzie Smith, the Ambassador of the United Kingdom. We had a full house. Our second speaker was the Ambassador of Turkey to Georgia, Zeki Levent Gümrükçü, with his inspiring and impressive talk.

What steps are you taking to ensure that the impact of Impact Hub is as inclusive as possible? Fabrika and Impact Hub are here today as a result of the gentrification of Tbilisi. What kind of effect has this had on the neighbourhood?

Gentrification is a very difficult and perhaps controversial issue to talk about, given that it can bring a lot of positives and negatives to the areas affected. With respect to Fabrika and Impact Hub, I believe that it has gone a long way towards actually helping the neighborhood and benefiting the local community. You know, before Fabrika was built, this part of Tbilisi was lifeless: nothing was happening here. Now it has become a lot more popular with a greater flow of tourists and business, which has resulted not only in greater economic capital but also an increase in the creative capital of locals as they look to come up with new business ideas to tap into the attention that Fabrika has brought to the area.

Looking to the future, what plans do you have to consolidate and build upon the success of the last year?

First, we are going to take advantage of the widespread success and interest that was shown towards the Social Impact Award by having another edition in 2018. This year only Tbilisi and Telavi were involved in the program; our aim for 2018 is to expand the program into more cities and regions of Georgia. Besides, increasing our involvement with youth, women empowerment is another issue that we will be working on; we are currently formulating ideas for a project that focuses on helping empower young women living in the more conservative areas of the country.

Furthermore, we’re continuously working on member engagement. Once a month, we host community meetings where all members are welcome to share their experiences with each other, in an informal setting with a glass of wine in hand; it’s something that we’ll be continuing, as it is very important to keep the community united.

Finally, we’re collaborating with different organizations on a local as well as international level. For instance, we just organized a Students’ Startup Boot Camp in Kutaisi together with Garage 48, an Estonian organization that runs hackathons all over the world. The next Boot Camp will be held in Batumi in November.

This is just a small taste of things to come at Impact Hub. It goes without saying that the year ahead will be fantastic and full of amazing projects and events as we look to build upon the success of the last twelve months. Stay tuned!

Máté Földi