VSN Hub at Women Entrepreneurship – New Horizons BPW

Posted October 14, 2018

In Articles, News, Vicky Evangeliou, VSN HUB, Women Entrepreneurship

VSN Hub Women Entrepreneurship

Vicky Evangeliou, Founder of VSN HUB & Marketing Lead, is supporting the BPW New Horizons initiative. She has the honor to provide her expertise in Ancient Greek Philosophy & Open Dialogues Experience on the first day of the event, 18th October 2018, at Ancient Agora of Athens.

FIRST FORUM BPW ADRIONNET
WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP – NEW HORIZONS”
Under auspices of Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Experiential dialogue with Mrs. VICKY EVANGELIOU (VSN Hub, Marketing Lead)

1st day, THURSDAY, 18TH, OCTOBER 2018,
16:30 Walk to the Roman Agora ( Host: BPW Athens)
Experiential dialogue with Mrs. VICKY EVANGELIOU (VSN Hub, Marketing Lead)
With the directions of Dr. Michalis Katsimitis, Doctoral Degree in Philosophy, University of Athens, VSN Hub Advisory Panel Member
With the support of Areti Vassou, Digital Strategy Architect, VSN Hub Advisory Panel Member

BPW Europe is the European Region of BPW International. BPW International was founded in 1930 in Geneva by Lena Madisen Philips. It has grown to an international network of 30000 members in 100 countries. They have 5 regions to manage this large organization: North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific. Europe is the strongest region with appr. 20000 members in nearly 30 countries.

How BPW Europe developed

In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, several relatively informal international meetings were held for German-speaking and some for francophone BPW. There seemed to be a general desire for contacts and cooperation across national borders.

In 1977, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) was accredited to the Council of Europe and received consultative status along with some 200 NGOs. Marcelle Devaud was nominated Permanent Representative and Michelle Laublé(both of France) her alternate.

Michelle Laubé, then President of the Strasbourg Club, invited all European BPW Presidents and interested members to the 1st European Conference which took place in September 1981.

In October 1985, the 17th International Congress of BPW International in Auckland, New Zealand, voted to set up five regions, headed by Regional Coordinators. Marian Waats was elected to this position for Europe.

In September 1990, through the hard work of women such as Marcelle Devaud and Emilienne Brunfaut, the European Women’s Lobby was founded in Brussels. BPW is a member of the European Women’s Lobby and Renata Blodow was the first delegate of the European Federations of BPW to the EWL.

The presidents of the European Federations of BPW International decided to create the European Coordinating Committee to support the work of the Regional Coordinator.

In January 2009, the presidents of the European Federations of BPW International created a legal structure to run common projects at European level: BPW European Coordination aisbl (association internationale sans but lucratif – international non-profit organization).

The Executive Board of BPW Europe is made of the European Regional Coordinator and members of the ECC.

BPW Aims

Equal opportunities and status for women in the economic, civil and political life

A BPW Member:

takes professional responsibility on all levels in economy, politics and society
thinks and acts locally, nationally and internationally
practices networking, mentoring and lobbying
enjoys lifelong learning
works with United Nations agencies and other international organizations
develops friendship

Women’s Empowerment Principles

Launched on International Women’s Day, the Women’s Empowerment Principles-Equality Means Business suggests seven steps for companies to take to empower women in the workplace and the market place. They were launched by UN Women and the United Nations Global Compact on March 8th, 2010 based on a multi-stakeholder consultative process.

BPW International supports the WEPs and encourages its federations and affiliated clubs to promote the WEPs within their countries and to invite CEOs to sign the CEO letter for the WWEPs.

The Women’s Empowerment Principles are subtitled Equality Means Business because the full participation of women benefits business and by signing the Statement of Support, CEOs will demonstrate leadership on gender equality and women’s empowerment and will encourage fellow business leaders to do the same.

Ancient Agora of Athens

The Ancient Agora of Classical Athens is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora, located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill known as the Agoraios Kolonos, also called Market Hill.

The ancient Athenian agora has been excavated by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens since 1931 under the direction of T. Leslie Shear, Sr. They continue to the present day, now under the direction of John McK Camp.

After the initial phase of excavation, in the 1950s the Hellenistic Stoa of Attalos was reconstructed on the east side of the agora, and today it serves as a museum and as storage and office space for the excavation team.

A virtual reconstruction of the Ancient Agora of Athens has been produced through a collaboration of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Foundation of the Hellenic World, which had a various output (3d video, VR real-time dom performance, Google Earth 3d models).

Museum of the Ancient Agora

The museum is housed in the Stoa of Attalos, and its exhibits are connected with the Athenian democracy. The collection of the museum includes clay, bronze and glass objects, sculptures, coins and inscriptions from the 7th to the 5th century BC, as well as pottery of the Byzantine period and the Turkish occupation.

The exhibition within the museum contains work of art which describes the private and public life in ancient Athens. In 2012, new sculpture exhibition was added to the museum which includes portraits from Athenian Agora excavation. The new exhibition revolves around portraits of idealized gods, officially honored people of the city, wealthy Roman citizens of the 1st and 2nd century; AD, 3rd-century citizens and finally on work of art from private art schools of late antiquity.

Buildings and structures of the Ancient Agora

Temple of Hephaestus

The Temple of Hephaestus or Hephaisteion (also “Hephesteum”; Ancient Greek: Ἡφαιστεῖον, Greek: Ναός Ηφαίστου) or earlier as the Theseion (also “Theseum”; Ancient Greek: Θησεῖον, Greek: Θησείο), is a well-preserved Greek temple; it remains standing largely as built.

It is a Doric peripteral temple, and is located at the north-west side of the Agora of Athens, on top of the Agoraios Kolonos hill. From the 7th century until 1834, it served as the Greek Orthodox church of Saint George Akamates. The building’s condition has been maintained due to its history of varied use.

Hephaestus was the patron god of metalworking, craftsmanship, and fire. There were numerous potters’ workshops and metal-working shops in the vicinity of the temple, as befits the temple’s honoree. Archaeological evidence suggests that there was no earlier building on the site except for a small sanctuary that was burned when the Persians occupied Athens in 480 BC.

The name Theseion or Temple of Theseus was attributed to the monument under the assumption it housed the remains of the Athenian hero Theseus, brought back to the city from the island of Skyros by Kimon in 475 BC, but refuted after inscriptions from within the temple associated it firmly with Hephaestus.

Etymology of Agora

Agora: “open assembly place, chief public square and marketplace of a town; popular political assembly held in such a place,” from Greek agora “an assembly of the People” (as opposed to a council of Chiefs); “the place of assembly; a marketplace” (the typical spot for such an assembly), from ageirein “to assemble,” from PIE root *ger- “to gather.” The Greek word also could mean “public speaking,” and “things to be sold.” For sense, compare the Roman: forum.

The Peripatetic School

The name belongs to a series of philosophers of whom Aristotle was the first and by far the most significant. Geographically the school was located in a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo, called the Lyceum, a public space outside the city wall of Athens but within an easy walking distance (the Academy was another such place). A gymnasium was built there; by the end of the 5th cent.BCE. It was a favorite gathering place for young Athenian men.

Visiting sophists lectured there, Socrates met his young conversational partners there. As in other similar places, there were ‘walks’ (peripatoi). The name ‘Peripatos’ stuck to the school begun there by Aristotle, formerly a member of the Academy, when he returned to Athens in 336.

The school was original, perhaps always, a collection of people rather than a building: Aristotle, a non-Athenian with the status of metic, could not own property. His successor Theophrastus could and did, and he bequeathed real estate and a library to a group of his students, including Straton who was then elected Head.

Straton was succeeded by Lyco, Lyco by Ariston of Ceos, who was Head until c.190. After that the succession is obscure, but there is evidence of continuous philosophical activity until the 1st cent. bce, when Athens was captured by Sulla and the Peripatetic library removed to Rome. (For a detailed discussion of this period, and the complexities of the succession, see Lynch, Aristotle’s School.) Read more here>>

Aristotle Lyceum

Aristotle, when at the age of 50 years old, he was in Athens. Just outside the city boundary, he established his own school in a gymnasium known as the Lyceum. He built a substantial library and gathered around him a group of brilliant research students, called “peripatetics” from the name of the cloister (peripatos) in which they walked and held their discussions. The Lyceum was not a private club like the Academy; many of the lectures there were open to the general public and given free of charge.

Most of Aristotle’s surviving works, with the exception of the zoological treatises, probably belong to this second Athenian sojourn. There is no certainty about their chronological order, and indeed it is probable that the main treatises—on physics, metaphysics, psychology, ethics, and politics—were constantly rewritten and updated. Every proposition of Aristotle is fertile of ideas and full of energy, though his prose is commonly neither lucid nor elegant.

Aristotle’s works, though not as polished as Plato’s, are systematic in a way that Plato’s never were. Plato’s dialogues shift constantly from one topic to another, always (from a modern perspective) crossing the boundaries between different philosophical or scientific disciplines. Indeed, there was no such thing as an intellectual discipline until Aristotle invented the notion during his Lyceum period. Read more here>>

Ancient Agora Athens, Articles, culture, Experience, News, Open Dialogues, Tourism, Vicky Evangeliou, VSN HUB, Women Entrepreneurship