In a Nutshell: What is oikos?

This is the crash course introduction to oikos that you have been looking for!

The meaning of the word oikos highlights how we perceive our purpose in the world: oikos has multiple meanings which connect tightly to the core of sustainability and how our society works. Most of us are familiar with the prefix “ecos.” It sums up images of Earth, and forms the basis of words such as ecology, economics and ecosystem. They all share the same Greek root, ecos, derived from “oikos,” meaning “house or household’. The ancient Greek word oikos refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family's property, and the house - in our words: home.

What a fitting name for a community that cares deeply for the fate of our common home, planet earth, and how we want to live together in the future, right? Beyond this, oikos feels like home to many of us - and is home to many innovative pathways to how we want to learn and lead together.

What is oikos? A visual summary

The oikos Community

oikos is a community of student change agents that is working towards transforming management & economics education for sustainability. We are over 50 local groups, the so-called chapters, driving change in more than 20 countries worldwide with around 1000 active oikees every year.

An oikos chapter is a local, self-organised group of students that comes together to organise sustainability initiatives and change their own education at their local campus. oikos chapters can look very different as they emerge from the individual university context. They differ in size, organisational structure, formal conditions and their focus topics.

The current oikos map.

oikos International

oikos International, the umbrella organization, brings all of our members together. We are organized as a student-led nonprofit association that supports and fosters the network. Our initiatives focus on empowering student change agents in their leadership development and change initiatives for transforming their own education, as well as providing platforms for the community to come and grow together.

Transparency, what does that mean to us?

At oikos we want to rolemodel what we wish to see in the world. Therefore, showcasing how we function and what we do is a very important aspect, also when it comes to the topic of sustainability. We give our best to be as transparent and accessible as possible, so that not only our community, but also outstanding parties may understand and get inspired. This organisational guideline was created based on our understanding of transparency. You can see that in the structure of this guideline and the frequent updates, as well as in the glossary that defines the most relevant oikos terms we use day by day (see last chapter). In case you come across anything that is unclear or raises critical reflections: please make sure to share it with us so that we can learn and move ahead.

Do you have any feedback or find bugs/errors in the guideline? Anything we did not mention yet? We would love to read from you in our feedback/bug form!

Any further questions? Contact us! [e-mail] www.oikos.world