Irma Liubertiene is the Founder and CEO of Institute of Positive Education in Vilnius and the President of Social Emotional Learning Association of Lithuania. She is co-working as international coach and consultant in one of the biggest European companies, delivering concept of Emotional intelligence around the world “BCS International”.

For many years Irma has been working with children and teachers, initiating different social initiatives in Lithuania. One of the biggest initiatives – “Leadership Academy”, in partnership with the University of Vilnius, approved by Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Science as having great impact on developing leadership skills of pupils. It was nominated in 2012 as the “Social Initiative of the year” by BMI Alumni Association.

Her recent initiative “Applying Emotional Intelligence in education project Dramblys.lt” was nominated by organisations Reach For Change and TELE2 as the best social idea for bullying prevention in 2016.

Irma is the co-author of the book “Leadership Through the Eyes of a Child”, where her biggest input is showing how many abilities of EI children have naturally and how important is to develop them further at the school age.

In her back pack Irma is caring the diploma of MBA at Vilnius University, Master in EU Law at Aarhus University in Denmark and the EMBA in Baltic Management Institute. Now she is doing her PhD studies at the University of Education of Lithuania and exploring the topic of Social Emotional Learning.

Nerijus Buivydas is a founder and director of the first Democratic School in Lithuania (Demokratinė mokykla). He is also an instigator who started School of Success (Sėkmės Mokykla), which offers non-formal learning programs for upper grades‘ pupils. Most recent Nerijus’ activity, the education awareness campaign “Running through the Lithuanian schools”. As part of this campaign, Nerijus ran 20 marathons in 20 days (in total: 862 kilometers) and visited 20 schools, all while raising awareness about happier kids at Lithuanian schools.

Anna Kashina is a health psychologist and a storyteller, who writes books for children with special needs and for those who have difficulties in behaviour and upbringing. Anna trains parents and gives master-classes for specialists: psychologists, teachers and social workers. The House of Fairy Tales (www.skazki.lv) is Anna’s project and it releases production and multi-media interactive products for children and their parents and creates stories, that change the world.

Stoyana Stoeva is MA in Philosophy, freelancer consultant and translator and since 2014, a co-founder and partner of the Social Teahouse in Varna, Bulgaria. Two years ago the concept for providing mentorship for youngsters who grew up in orphanages in Bulgaria, was nominated as one of 3 finalists in the first edition of Reach for Change competition in Bulgaria.

Stoyana has more than 5 years experience as a volunteer for people from marginalized groups, and 3,5 years in volunteering for children and more than 10 years experience in non-governmental organizations. She is also one of the authors of Social innovation concept of Varna’s candidacy for European Youth Capital 2017 which won the title for the city. The Social Teahouse with her partner Maya Doneva is inspired from this experience as innovation for sustainable improvement of quality of life of youngsters after they reach the age of 18.

The Social teahouse is one of the few successful examples of social start ups in the Balkans. Even though the initiative is relatively young (fully functioning since May’16,) The Social teahouse has proven to be an attractive socio-cultural centre for Varna and promises to be a successfully implemented social innovation for the region.

DayCape wants everyone to live in a world where they feel excited about the day ahead of them. For children with autism, the tasks of the upcoming day can seem very intimidating. That´s why we developed a fun and interactive digital image calendar that helps them plan their day and being able to look forward to the activities scheduled.

DayCape is a digital image calendar for children with autism. We hope that it will be a great support in daily life even and even when growing up. Even if living with autism has its difficulties these children have there own uniqueness and skills that can be uplifted with the right kind of help. By transforming autism into a superpower, we want to help our users develop the confidence to embrace the exciting day ahead.

Anton Håkanson, founder of DayCape, was as a young child diagnosed within the autistic spectrum. Even if he at an older age was diagnosed without autism he might just have a very special understanding of the daily issues that occurs. Anton read a great deal of cartoons as a child and his favorite hero was Peter Parker as Spiderman. Even with all the powers and spidersense Peter had conflicting feelings about becoming Spiderman and how to use his powers. As Spiderman he is unable to save everyone and is struggling with feeling different and weak despite his unusual powers. But, Peter always had friends and family supporting him in the most difficult times that helped him become the great superhero he was meant to be.

Anton: – “That is why I think DayCape needs to exist. Just like Peter Parker these children struggle with powers they don’t understand. But, with the right help from family and friends they can discover there own superpowers.”

Ausra Kurienė is a psychologist, child and adolescence psychotherapist, group analyst, founder and director of the NGO children Support Centre, teacher at Vilnius University in postgraduate psychotherapy programs. More than 20 years Children Support centre provides psychological help for children with emotional behavioral difficulties, abused children, children in crises, and educates parents and professionals. Aušra has prepared several methodicals for professional and is an author of books for parents „What every child need to know about abuse“ and „How ro raise a human being“. In 2013 Aušra Kurienė got a Human Rights Voice award for taking care of children who experienced physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

In 2008 Donatas drastically changed his life. From being a promising media analyst he shifted into working with homeless people in a homeless shelter. He encountered many life stories, which were far from successful. Back then Donatas started to meditate, what would have happened if in their young days someone had prevented their fall. Maybe then they would have never found themselves in this position.

In 2011 Donatas joined Vilnius Archdiocesan Caritas Craft Training Centre. While working with the social disadvantage youth, he was always looking for new and effective methods of informal education to improve their lives. Due to this, in 2014 he initiated Erasmus+ project “Time for Change, Europe”. In two years the program was adopted by piloting the adapted version.

Donatas: - “Considering the results which surpassed our expectations we seek to integrate this know-how learning experience to the Craft Training course. Our goal is to become a difference to at least one more destiny of a struggling young person.”

At this moment, Donatas works as a youth worker and a manager of VA Caritas Craft Training Centre.

Artiomas Šabajevas - a head of social business startup in health field "Teenshapers", co-founder and a member of the board of "Lobesity" Lithuanian association for prevention of overweight and obesity. 1st prize winner of 2015 competition in the field of social innovations for children, organized by "Reach for Change" and "TV3" in Lithuania.

Having personally faced the problem of obesity in his family and successfully overcome it, Artiomas decided to use his collected experience in regular business and non-formal education, for creation of solution of particular social problem. The problem is related to the rise of prevalence in children with overweight or obesity in Lithuania. Artiomas created a team of professional dietologist, PA teacher and health Psychologist to start specialized intervention programs for teenagers, during which participants learn healthy and balanced eating habits, proper physical activity, enhance self-confidence. Artiomas is not only led to organizational work. With five years of professional practice as relationship coach and reliable background and skills in distant learning, he jointly implements educational activities at "Teenshapers": keeps direct contact with program participants and their parents, performs individual and group coaching sessions, takes care of the realization of remote support.

Also, together with the partners, indifferent to the social context, he founded preventative organization - "Lobesity" which seeks to pay a great portion of attention to the education of the public in the field of healthy lifestyle in Lithuania.

Coordinator of LR President Dalia Grybauskaitė's nationwide social campaign “For A Safe Lithuania”

Alex Gibb currently heads Sustainability for SEB’s Baltic Division, the leading bank in the Baltic States. His experience in the region has covered public, private and non-governmental sectors, including ten years as the director of a British NGO, promoting rural development in Lithuania, Poland and Belarus. Alex works with resilience on a daily basis. As well as banking he mentors young people, supports several start- ups and operates as a non-executive director to various e-commerce firms, Create for Lithuania and Invest Lithuania, the country’s main FDI promotion agency.

Violeta Masteikienė is a founder of Friends' Jam. This initiative uses harvest excess to make tasty jam together with big families, sell it and create opportunity to earn extra money. This year Violeta got Social Enterprise Leader award for keep raising awareness and changing public opinions toward big families.

Liudovika Pakalkaite is the National Director of SOS Children’s Villages Lithuania, the largest international NGO in Lithuania which invests in children in need and provides family care for children, who have lost parental care. Previously, a professional HR manager and consultant, Liudovika also has hands on experience in managing a travel agency. The call to join an NGO, came from a lifetime of volunteering with children from large families and without parental care, and then dedicating several years to help create the first cancer support centre in Lithuania.

Why businesses invest into social innovations?

• How long term partnerships with business solve social problems in the society?
• How being socially responsible enhances the business world?

Vaida is a clinical psychologist and social entrepreneur. She’s passionate about connecting innovation and psychology in a most efficient way. She builds engaging solutions through gamification and creates a gamified bullying prevention program UNIQUE CHILD.

CMO at TutoTOONS, kids’ app development & publishing studio.
TutoTOONS offers a free drag and drop game builder that lets artists create mobile games with no coding and earn from it. We hand-select the best games made by creative talents worldwide, publish them on Google Play, App Store and Amazon, and share the game revenue with the game author. Since launch in early 2014, TutoTOONS published 260+ games with over 160M downloads.

Egidijus Meilus is a senior advisor of Ombudsperson for Children's Rights. Egidijus is a lawyer and teacher for many years working in the field of child protection. His specializations is related to children’s rights to privacy, education, protection from Detrimental Effect of Public Information.

Rūta is a managing director at a governmental institution – Enterprise Lithuania. As she says the most important thing that motivates her and her team work at the organization is its mission and values – „we work for Lithuania, so that we can live happily, work hardly and create our own businesses here in Lithuania“. Enterprise Lithuania is responsible for entrepreneurship in all Lithuania and export promotion abroad.