The Changemakers Academy is a social entrepreneurship competition in Estonia organized and supported by the British Council to raise awareness of social entrepreneurship, to combine native-speakers of Estonian and Russian, and give young people the opportunity to take the first steps in the Business World with the help of a mentors and social entrepreneur in marketing.

This competition is focusing on young people. Why young people? Young people are those who create the future. The end of the basic school and the beginning of upper secondary school is the time, which largely determines where the future is going to go. An inspirational example is the leader of Taxify – Markus Villigu, who was awarded the title of Young Entrepreneur in 2016 in Estonia. Nowadays, his is the youngest leader nominated in the list Forbes under 30. He opened his own company during his studies at a gymnasium. Now Taxify has expanded to more than 25 countries.

The goals of The Changemakers Academy are:

from each of the competitions within the 6 months one (social) company, at least three student companies or other entrepreneurial output will grow for at least every fourth young person.

One of the goals of the competition is integrate young native Estonian speakers to non-Estonian speakers (mostly Russian speakers). The Changemakers Academy brings together Estonian and Russian speaking youth to tackle the marketing challenges of social enterprises in their communities.

 

The competition includes:

  • Free training: marketing, analytical skills·       Personal co-operation with one inspirational social entrepreneur
  • Meeting the World changers social entrepreneurs from Estonia
  • Each team will have a mentor
  • On-spot community practice
  • The ability to reach the result from idea to action
  • New friends
  • A great additon to CV
  • Great awards and best participants will have a chance to travel to England

The programm will run for 5 months for participants.

First participants, 200, were selected from the pool of 600 candidates in the end of 2018. There are expected at least 150 (social) companies to start their activities after the competition next year.

The Changemakers Academy is upported by The British Council, Estonian Social Enterprise Network, National Foundation of Civil Society and Ministry of the Interior.

For future information please visit The Changemakers Academy’s websites: https://www.facebook.com/changemakersacademysev/

https://sev.ee/projektid/changemakers-academy/