An app that virtually selects the best combination of clothes for you. A platform that allows you to discover where you can best use your volunteering skills and, if necessary, digitally prepare documents for social hours. An app that helps you discover the music of young Lithuanians and their upcoming concerts. Such self-created products on December 8 at the Lithuanian Exhibition and Congress CenterLitexpo" presented by students who are still studying at school. Every year, the organization "Lietuvos Junior Achievement" organizes the exhibition of schoolchildren's businesses "Christmas of student educational companies eXpo", to which 130 teams are selected. This year, a record number of schoolchildren participated in the exhibition - almost 600. They were evaluated by over 150 business mentors from the largest Lithuanian companies, associations and state institutions. "Soci.lt", "Picfit" and "MIGO" were announced as the best educational companies.
This year, students presenting business ideas at the exhibition proposed to use technology to solve their current and global problems, creatively applying digital technologies or engineering knowledge. Almost 40% of the business ideas presented at the exhibition – mobile apps, virtual platforms, EdTech solutions or engineering product prototypes – were created in STEAM laboratories. A large part of these digital tools were intended to facilitate the learning process of students - to get help with homework, to find a tutor that meets their needs in the app, to learn material presented with moving animations.
This year, even the youngest participants of the digital business program - 5th-8th grade students - dared to present themselves to the visitors. Separate exhibitions have been organized for them event - the competition for lightning-fast business idea presentations "Bravely into digital business".
The head of "Lietuvos Junior Achievement" Anželika Rusteikienė was happy that the inclusion of younger students contributes to the key goal of the organization - progressive entrepreneurship education in schools, from the youngest to the oldest students have the opportunity to acquire entrepreneurial competencies.
"We believe that no age is too young to learn financial literacy, economics and entrepreneurship. It is interesting for children, and even 100 schoolchildren from 5-8 grades were in this exhibition, they performed well and surprised the commission. The motto of this exhibition is "Unwrap the gift of entrepreneurship!". We used it to encourage people to come and buy Christmas presents from schoolchildren. However, it is a great gift for the students themselves, when the managers and professionals of the largest Lithuanian companies give them attention and insights. The evaluation committee of this eXpo includes people from the first founders of Lithuanian unicorns to the alumni of "Lietuvos Junior Achievement", who presented their innovations and products under development to the public for the first time at the same exhibition a few years ago," says A. Rusteikienė.
SEB bankas has been supporting the entrepreneurship education of schoolchildren for many years, the bank's experts actively participate in the commission of business mentors, and the bank's board member Eglė Dovbyšienė presented named awards to the three teams with the highest scores at the event.
"Lithuania still has a long way to go in promoting and developing entrepreneurship, because there could be many more young people creating businesses in the country, and it is necessary to encourage the entrepreneurship of young women and girls even more, because there are still very few of them - entrepreneurs, business owners or board members. And this trend has been observed for several years. It's not true that everyone has to be successful the first time, because mistakes should be seen as lessons. Therefore, every contribution of companies, partners and volunteers in promoting entrepreneurial culture is extremely important", said E. Dovbyšienė.
Seeks to reform the social hours collection system
Alan Azikejev, the representative of the company "Soci.lt", announced as one of the best teams of the "Christmas eXpo", decided together with his friends to reform the currently existing system of accumulating social hours in schools.
"With this app, we wanted to slightly reform the ancient system: currently, 11-12th grade students have 70 hours of volunteering a year, thus accumulating the so-called social hours. Everything is done in the "old" way: forms are filled out, signatures and evaluations of representatives of the organizations where volunteering are collected," says Alan Azikejev.
On Soci.lt, you could choose an organization where you would like to volunteer - then apply electronically for the offered position. If the organization accepted the student, his volunteer hours would be recorded in all systems: school databases, "Tamo" electronic diary. Without any manual filling of physical documents. Teachers could download volunteering statistics for either a single student or the entire class.
Such an idea came to Alan and Kornelijs Šults after analyzing how complicated the social hours registration system is at the moment, how much time teachers waste processing all the documents brought by the students and the information provided by them. During the first months of activity, students have already attracted partners - these are organizations "Food bank” and “Art Printing House”. They have already started negotiations on cooperation with Vilnius city municipality.
"We are currently in the testing phase of the platform. Our school, Vilnius Simon Daukantas Gymnasium, has about 700 students. We will check whether the platform can withstand such a load, - A. Azikejev immediately addressed the large number of users. - We will collect feedback, correct errors and offer such a product to all residents of Vilnius. If it works, we will expand to Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys."
In this team, Gabrielė Žalėnaitė is responsible for communication in social networks, Paulius Mockus – for managing finances, and Kornelijs Šulcas – for partnerships with organizations and municipalities. The team also got help from their friends who were studying - they contributed with programming and website design.
The app will suggest what to wear today - not only from stores, but also from what's in your closet
Another top pick team, Picfit, has come to present an app that will select the best matching clothing combinations for its user. "Try on" clothes are offered virtually by some clothing brands, but Picfit's developers aim to make it possible to combine clothes already in the app user's closet, as well as to include clothes that are exchanged by the community, for example, sold on the platform "Vinted".
The representatives of the team, the students of Vilnius Abraomas Kulvietis Classical Gymnasium, Rugile Šimkutas and Mats Jarmalis, came up with this idea completely by chance - it was inspired by an old movie: in it, a girl measures clothes and virtually sees possible combinations.
The Picfit team has already discovered a mobile phone feature that makes it easy to measure a garment placed on a plane. However, it would take a whole team of programmers to render it as a 3D image on a specific person.
"Finances are currently the biggest problem," R. Šimkutė thought. - Therefore, for the time being, we are writing requests to programmers who would like to contribute to the idea, or at least advise in which direction to work. We are preparing a proposal for potential investors, drawing the design of the app."
The team member responsible for the design of the app, Gytė Ulinskaitė, prepared a prototype of the app, which visitors could view during the "Christmas educational companies eXpo" exhibition.
The Picfit team also plans to make the app free for users. For the service it offers, a small commission would be paid by the seller of the clothes, if the visualization of the combination created by the app helps to sell the clothes.
"We would like to promote sustainability. We would cooperate with platforms and stores selling second-hand clothes," M. Jarmalis emphasized.
"We believe that the app would help protect against overproduction, designs that look beautiful only on models, but nobody wears them in reality," remarked R. Šimkutė.
From music to app - how did the idea for MIGO come about?
The third best team of "Kalėdinės eXpo" was declared "MIGO" - a team of students from Vilnius Gabija Gymnasium really found an original niche - they are creating an app designed to help discover young Lithuanian artists, then see where and when they will perform, listen to a few songs.
"The idea came from an economics and entrepreneurship class. We talked about the fact that all of us - members of the team - are united by music. However, Marija Žlabytė also noticed that many Lithuanian performers are little known and unheard of. We continued to think about how to solve this problem," says Rokas Nevinskas.
"Users of the app would receive reminders that their favorite artist is coming concert. In addition, they could find new friends with the same taste in music," team president Elžbieta Mieldažytė introduced the app.
The MIGO team has already demonstrated a prototype of their app at this exhibition.
"We would generate revenue by charging artists. Up-and-coming artists could describe their music style and upload a few songs to our platform. Also, in the future, we plan to become a ticket sales agent - in other words, to buy a ticket to the concert of your favorite artist a concert, no need to go to yet another site. A small fee for mediation and ticket sales would also generate income for us," said Matas Malūnavičius, who is responsible for the educational company's finances.
He added that the team does not intend to limit itself to only concerts and only Lithuanian performers. This is the initial idea, but it can include more countries, different venues, include for example stand up show events, comedians' performances.
These three ideas were selected as the best by a panel of business professionals who attended the "Christmas Educational Student Companies eXpo". However, a total of 3 second and third place awards and 28 named awards were handed out at this event: for attention to the community, for creating a social business, the most innovative idea, the idea that can attract investments the easiest.
Students will continue to develop their ideas - at the beginning of 2024, they will also have the opportunity to distribute the shares of their companies through the "Stock Exchange" and participate in the "eXpo" exhibitions held in the regions. In the spring, the team declared the best at the "National eXpo" will go to the largest European entrepreneurship festival "Gen-E", organized in Italy.
Lietuvos Junior Achievement is a non-governmental organization, a leader in youth entrepreneurship and financial literacy education programs in Lithuania. The organization's programs are financed by the Ministry of Economy and Innovation, the Innovation Agency, long-term impact investor SEB bankas, Moody's Lithuania, The Coca-Cola Foundation, Narbutas, UPS Lithuania, Scandagra, the Marius Jakulis Jason Foundation , Nordcurrent, Kaunas grudai. Pepco, Western Union and others.
