In 2007, as Greece was staring down the barrel of a severe recession, you'd have been hard pressed to find many young people willing to invest any time or energy in building a future in the country. So the idea of kick starting a new export-led business in Greece from scratch – catering to the global demand from restaurants and grocery stores for ready-to-eat organic snails – seems inconceivable, doesn't it? But that is exactly what Penny Vlachou (31) and her sister Maria (32) – who was studying abroad at the time – decided to do.

The story of Fereikos-Helix's success – creating jobs in organic snail farming for more than 168 young families across Greece in a country with the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe – is massively inspiring and should serve as a reminder to us all that there is light in all this continent-wide doom.