Ethiopia

On the 16th of October an exciting mud festival was organized by Ethiopian social entrepreneur Hamere Mulugeta and her team (Nu chika Enabuka) at the biggest Meskel Squre in Addis Ababa. More than 10,000 people participated. The festival was intended to strengthen family bonds and create a space for children to play with their families and enjoy the real childhood experience. The event was covered by most of the local TV stations including the national television plus CGTN Africa. It also created an opportunity for other social entrepreneurs to promote themselves and sell their products and services. 

Sweden

In September we launched a project funded by the governmental delegation against segregation "Delmos". The aim is to work together with social entrepreneurs and others focusing on solutions around youth unemployment in Sweden, and the municiplity of Stockholm, to indentify challenges in collaborations and cooperation. We are expecting to increase the understanding of the two sectors and find potential ways for further collaboration allowing the municipality to purchase and utilize the solutions the entreprenuers provide. We are building part of this project on a EU-funded pre-study we carried out earlier this year where we also looked at obstacles and challenges.

Latvia

Reach for Change participated in the Social Economy Mission in Latvia lead by Vidzeme Planning Region together with partners from Cantabria region (Spain), Lombardia region (Italy) and Pomeranian Voivodeship (Poland). Partners are implementing Social Ecosystem Leads the Future (SELF) project. Its aim is to develop a resilient social economy model for the rural environment. At the end, the project aims to create, consolidate and develop a new and transnational network of regional authorities, experts and entities of social economy sector with similar concerns. 

Baiba Blomniece Jurāne (founder and CEO of Barboleta Development Method) won one of the main two prizes among 10 finalists in the pitch competition organized by Social Entrepreneurship Association in Latvia. During the pitch Baiba presented a new product called "What's going on with me?" - a methodological material, which includes an opportunity to discuss with children the following topics: stress anatomy, emotional intelligence, self-regulation, emotion awareness. The material has been created to develop professionals and teachers, with the aim of facilitating conversations with children about difficult situations.   

Russia

The Vladimir Potanin Foundation recently invested 10M RUB into the endowment fund of the foundation "Navstrechu Peremenam", our sister organization in Russia. The endowment itself was established in February 2021 for a period of 20 years, its first donations made by the members of the Board. 

Next year the Russian foundation will celebrate its 10 year anniversary. During the 9 years of its existence, it has supported 72 start-ups, 85% of which are successfully developing and have provided help to over 500 000 children in Russia. The aim for the anniversary 2022 year is to raise funds for the endowment. Learn more here. 

Bulgaria

The 8th edition of the Game Changers contest (called locally PROMYANATA) has its five finalists. The Online Voting started on the 11th of November. Three finalists with the most votes will compete for the prize of BGN 30 000. The other four finalists will receive BGN 10 000. They will also receive media support by NOVA Broadcasting Group and a place in the 6-months Accelerator program.

We recently launched a new exciting initiative together with Forbes Bulgaria, Unicredit Bulbank, The Business Institute, ING Bank and the Municipal Guarantee Fund for SME (Sofia) – the Impact Community, part of our “Valley of Growth” project. More than 60 social entrepreneurs, business experts, investors and representatives of the NGO and governmental institutions are now part of it. On October the 21st the very first event of the Impact Community took place in a hybrid format. It presented the whole project and gave the floor to our first keynote speakers: Diana Aladzhova - investor and entrepreneur with expertise in the financial sector and equity investments, and Ivan Atanasov - a social entrepreneur and financier with 20 years of experience in the field of financial services. 

Ghana

Reach for Change in partnership with ZongoVation Hub and Social Enterprise Ghana organized a one day training for young entrepreneurs to develop their skills on how to engage government, how to advocate for or access their rights to services to secure their economic well-being and to be sustainably self-employed as well as making and measuring impact.

Denmark 

On the 2nd of December Reach for Change Denmark together with Kybri, SoCentral and Voksenåsen is having Nordic Inclusion day. The whole day we will be focusing on different ways to reach SDG10 through SDG17, or how to reduce inequalities through sustainable partnerships. To get inspired we have invited organisations that are already doing this! They'll be the inspiration of the workshops, where we'll dicuss how partnerships can look like, what the benefits are and what challenges we face on the way. Join us here.

Lithuania

Alumni Digiklasė (now rebranded to Memby) has received $1M in pre-seed funding round led by Change Ventures to make affordable online tutoring the norm. Memby is one-to-many tutoring platform, with a mission to help struggling school students to stay consistent in after-school studies. Memby launched as Digiklase in Lithuania just one year ago and since then has become the largest informal education provider in the country with 3,500 students learning 24 subjects. Greece and Poland are the next markets to conquer – the startup has just launched there.