Meet The Team

Originally from Zimbabwe, Cecilia Sakatira is the co- Owner and founder of Creative Hands. Her passion and expertise is to aid the spiritual, emotional and physical development of women and families. Since 1998, Cecilia has worked with at-risk women and children on four continents in multiple countries: in Brazil, Tunisia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Greece. She speaks six languages and holds a Master of Arts in Christian Counseling (Vision International University, 2013), as well as several specialized training certificates, including International Human Trafficking (University of San Angelo, 2013), Principles and Practices in Christian Microfinance and Microenterprise Development (Chalmers Center for Economic Development, 2009), Social Education with Children at Risk (Happy Child International, 2003), and Pattern Making and Design (Harare Polytechnic, 2001).

Renae is a musician by training and passion, holding undergraduate and Master’s degree in music, as well as a Doctor of Arts in Choral Conducting with a secondary study in Higher Education. She initially came to Athens in February of 2019 to observe and hoped to aid the desperate situation of the growing refugee population in the country. Renae could see the exciting potential of the project in the lives of the displaced women who came to Greece.  She has had the previlege to use music to teach university students about the connection between the arts and culture, and ultimately, to what we believe about life. Her desire is to use creativity and beauty to connect people to one another and the world around them, as well as to better understand themselves, excites her to join the Creative Hands team.

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Aphrodite is one of the brave local women who responded to our advert in 2021 whereby we invited Greek women to come and learn weaving alongside us and learn more about Creative Hands and what it is we do. She came for two weeks and she is still with us! We trained her and she decided she liked what we were doing and wanted to help us through volunteering. We are blessed to have her with us ever since! She has been a great help in terms of making sure things are running well. She has had to learn quite a bit in relating with women from other nations and we love how to she has responded with grace and love.

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Noor is from Syria and came to Greece many years ago with her husband who went back home from Greece to get a bride among his own people. She is a mother of three teenage children, all doing great in Greek schools. We love how over the years God has been leading us to widen our scope of women and hence create a small community within the larger Greek community.

We invited her to come and help us with sewing, she came and has been amazing. She is meticulous in her work and we are very happy to have as part of the Creative Hands team.

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Elisabeth Antonellou is our IT Specialist. She manages our website, social media, newsletters and campaigns.

She was born and raised in the Bahamas from Greek parents who eventually moved back to Greece, where Elisabeth finished Greek school and obtained a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems. She has worked  in the fields  of computing and education for the past 15 years and was very excited to be a part of the Creative Hands team, supporting us in any way she can.

Joy is originally from Nigeria and is a single mother to Nicholas. She has been with us since February 2024 and has learned both sewing and weaving but focuses mainly on weaving and has been weaving some of our beautiful rugs in our collection. It was at an Action Aid event that Joy and other participants were being honoured with certificates of attendance and completion of some course. We immediately felt a pull in our hearts for this lovely mother. We invited her to come and visit us at Creative Hands and meet the rest of our team.

We have loved seeing Joy bloom and grow in her new skill and gain confidence in a short period of time and now she is working Monday-Friday from 9:00-3:00pm and we are grateful to God for that. We love Joy and she is a breath of fresh air to all of us at Creative Hands.

Tigist is originally from Ethiopia and the way I met her was truly a God ordained meeting. She is a single mother raising her 5 year old sweet and beautiful girl. It was in August 2024 that I went to visit another Ethiopian family in town, a family that we helped resettle in 2022-2023 after being deported from Sweden. Tigist’s story was a bit similar to the other family’s story and she was also sent back by the Swedish government because they would not renew her documents. She was desperate and did not know what to do. Because of our partnership with other organizations in the greater Athens area working with displaced people we were able to get the renewal of her papers started and also enroll her daughter in a nearby school. She did her training and on the 1st of November we hired her as one of the weavers at Creative Hands and we are very thankful we have her on our team.

We have grown once again at Creative Hands as we welcomed Rose from South Sudan to our team. Rose came to us in December 2024 and started training with us and in March we officially hired her on a part-time basis and she is doing well. Rose is a single mother of two beautiful daughters who are in boarding school in Uganda where some of her family has settled. One of her greatest desires is that her daughters will get the best education that will enable them to chart a different path for their future and re-write the story of their family line. We have already seen God provide for Rose to help her daughters and we are grateful for that.