An inspiring student social enterprise – Vanora

Earlier this month I met again a great team of young Estonians who have being working hard to establish a social enterprise in their town of Viljandi, southern Estonia.
Their student company is called Vanora, and there is a lot more about their company on their Facebook site .

Their business model is simple – in return for a very small charge, they provide services to the elderly, disabled and others who need help to do work in the garden, shopping, looking after their pets etc. They provide a service that is much needed, and in return they get a great deal of satisfaction from helping others in their community – and some income. As they say openly, and as confirmed by representatives of the retired community, the people they help don’t want to get something for free – if they do something useful for them, they want to pay them something for doing it.

The team at Vanora have received support in their work from local community leaders, the town government and national politicians. They have now also starred regularly in local and national newspapers (  See article in Maaleht ), and even appeared on TV (See the clip on TV3 News ).

They are now eyeing expansion of their business model across Estonia, and want to encourage other students either to join their company or to start their own to do something similar.

And what has this got to do with the British Embassy? For the last few years, we have been sharing experience with Estonian politicians, government officials and NGOs on social enterprise – offering ideas based on UK experience, discussing levelling the playing field (eg in enabling social enterprises to compete more easily in public procurements, where legislative change is now being considered in Estonia after our discussions) and in showcasing initiatives such as the Dotforge Impact in the UK, which has now established productive links with Estonia through a recent visit by social entrepreneur in residence Colin Tan (Twitter – @Rentlord ). Colin spoke to local social enterprises, including another service provider for the disabled, Helpific,  which emerged from a hackathon sponsored by the Embassy and which links those requesting specific help with volunteers to provide help, as well as being a mentor and judge at the Estonian national final of the Chivas Venture which led to Estonian company Sentab being selected for the global final later this year – an interactive technology solution to reduce loneliness among those who spend a lot of time alone.

As part of this wider work, the Embassy sponsored last year a competition among Estonian schools to develop a social enterprise. A day-long brainstorming with businesspeople acting as mentors was followed by work to deliver their ideas in practice. Vanora won the competition. And have been impressive ever since.

My congratulations to Helena Harriet, Sandra, Karl-Rasmus, Martin, Sander and Saskia. They are great examples to other young people, and to all the rest of their community.  The British Embassy is proud to have been able to help them help others.