Success stories

New entrepreneur:
Diana Khirianova (Ukraine)
Age: 21
Company name: “Open Studio” (Start-up)
Sector of activity: Education and training services

Host entrepreneur:
Arūnas Survila (Lithuania)
Age: 36
Company name: Innovator’s Valley/ inovatoriuslenis.lt (16 years of experience)
Sector of activity: Education and training services

Khirianova Diana is a 21-year-old entrepreneur from Ukraine. She has got inspired to create her own coliving place after a short-term volunteering project. Her host Arunas Survila is an experienced entrepreneur that runs few NGO’s, including focused on creating a non-formal education hub which involves coliving and coworking aspects a lot. Moreover Innovator’s Valley (the organization where the exchange was held) was always open for new ideas and welcomed new experiences a lot. That’s how their six-month journey started. Diana wanted to get to know everything about how to start her own business, as she had no previous experience in it and Arunas wanted to share his experience and help Diana and to broaden his knowledge through this exchange.

From the very beginning Diana received full support of HE and HIO organizations to fully integrate in the exchange. She started with the SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP SEEDS training in Bulgaria which gave a great start for the exchange and further understanding of each other's goals and cooperation. With the help of Arunas Diana discovered the principles of social business, ways to manage coliving space, find and deal with partners, write own projects and much more. It created a great opportunity for NE to gain experience in writing projects that have social value and organizing events that have educational basis. Diana suggested Arunas more collaborative approach of work, starting from weekly meetings with all the team which helped to cooperate, brainstorm together, and be more productive and do their work more efficiently. Moreover, Diana advised retargeting in promoting which helped to find new clients and partners and not only in Lithuania but also in other countries.

Both HE and NE improved their personal social language and learning to learn competences. Diana gained enough knowledge in the business management system to start her own business. Thanks to reorganization of work they’ve created up to 4 new job places in Innovators Valley, found 3 new partners for different projects and new regular customers. This exchange greatly helped them to improve social and management skills, develop mentoring skills, and increased their motivation to work further with social entrepreneurship, especially on the project of Folk High School. In the end Diana and Arunas agreed to try to create new projects in Ukraine when it will be possible and until that time to keep in touch and continue discussions and work on the Folk High School project. Moreover, Arunas offered Diana a job in Innovators Valley when she is ready to come back to Lithuania, in case Diana will not be able to start her own business at home.

For more information, please contact the local contact points involved in the exchange:

New entrepreneur's contact point:
Alfred Nobel University (Dnipro, Ukraine)

Host entrepreneur's contact point:
European social entrepreneurship and innovative studies institute (Kaunas, Lithuania)

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