Impact

This coding school is our largest supported initiative. We created it with seven other co-founders in 2020. The aim was to reduce the shortage of software developers and provide an easily accessible retraining opportunity with a self-learning curriculum.

To date, the school has admitted a total of 1002 students over four consecutive years and has over 130 graduates, of whom 100 have found jobs in software development. The alumni have founded at least three startups; MindSee, which reached the Top 20 in the Ajujaht accelerator programme, deals with the mental well-being of young people and StealthSyntax develops data protection solutions.

Last year saw the development of a new learning platform and the school’s expansion to Finland – a good example of how we can export education to neighbouring countries.

The expansion goal for the next few years is to have ten schools, which will be just the start of a journey to reach one million students worldwide. To do this, we need to further develop our study programme and user experience for both students and employers interested in the programme and strengthen our presence at the destinations where we plan to expand.

kood.tech

Praktikal offers physics and chemistry teaching materials and assists teachers in lesson preparation. Praktikal has already reached 160 schools and impacted the studies of more than 25,000 students. The initiative aims to expand beyond Estonia and become one of the pioneers in Estonia’s education export. Praktikal’s platform is a comprehensive solution where one can create learning content, conduct engaging lessons, organize knowledge assessments, collect learning analytics, and analyze it. Praktikal saves teachers time and modernizes subject teaching.

praktikal.ee

Peaasi.ee is the largest non-profit organisation dealing with mental health issues in Estonia. The organisation works to promote mental health, prevent mental health problems, provide early intervention and reduce stigma in our society.

Peaasi.ee offers counselling services and training and develops innovative approaches to addressing mental health challenges in our society.

The Peaasi.ee portal had 1.1 million visits last year. Face-to-face and online counselling was provided to 1,700 and 5,600 clients, respectively.

Support from Taavet+Sten Tulevikufond helped Peaasi.ee create a strategy for financial sustainability, build capacity to scale up activities and develop the mental health chatbot robot peaasi ee.

peaasi.ee

In the Arengusammud programme, teachers help each other to improve by conducting classroom observations, giving accurate feedback and supporting the practice of new teaching skills step by step. Research shows that this is the most effective method of teachers’ professional development.

Arengusammud started when the programme founders realised that teachers have many concerns: some are concerned about how to engage and motivate the learners, others about supporting self-directed learners or reaching out to every student.

arengusammud.ee

Kiusamisvaba Kool SA develops the KiVa anti-bullying programme in Estonia. It is globally recognised as one of the most effective and comprehensive solutions for reducing bullying. The programme, which started at the University of Turku, has reached more than 20 countries around the world.

The initiative supports teachers and parents with knowledge that helps prevent bullying and tackle incidents. The KiVa programme also works to develop skills that enable schoolchildren to better cope with themselves and their relationships in groups and to build and maintain safe and respectful relationships. Among other things, KiVa teaches how to stand up to bullying.

In Estonia, the programme has reached nearly 140 schools over 11 years, with 122 schools, over 5,000 teachers and more than 45,000 pupils currently applying the KiVa principles. Taavet+Sten Tulevikufond joined the initiative in 2023. The fund helped recruit two new mentors to support high-quality prevention of bullying in 60 schools and to support expansion to more schools.

kiusamisvaba.ee/kiva-programm

Access to mental health care is a worldwide problem. Limbic, a UK-based company, develops AI solutions to help scale up clinical psychological care. Their first product, Limbic Access, focuses on diagnostics – before the first visit, the patient can interact with a chatbot to describe their concerns and fill in the necessary questionnaires. This gives the psychologist a preliminary understanding of the patient’s needs, risk level and potential diagnosis before the visit, allowing them to make the most of their valuable time. In addition to saving time, Limbic Access increases the likelihood of the patient getting professional help, particularly among minority groups, according to data published in Nature Medicine.

The second and newest product, Limbic Care, is a chatbot-based solution that provides psychological support to the patient between sessions and assists the patient with the exercises prescribed by the psychologist (e.g. based on cognitive behavioural therapy). In addition, the psychologist is given an overview of the patient’s concerns and progress between sessions, again helping to make better use of valuable session time.

limbic.ai

The Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a growth programme for science-intensive businesses, was established at the University of Toronto and has expanded from there to 13 top universities around the world. In addition to Oxford, Paris and Berlin, CDL-Estonia was launched in 2022 at the University of Tartu, funded in partnership by Vabamu, Taavet*Sten Tulevikufond and the Estonian government through the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.

The CDL-Estonia growth programme focuses on early-stage entrepreneurs who have great ambitions and a strong scientific foundation. In this way, we want to help tackle issues in fields such as digital governance, cybersecurity, public health and genomics.

Each year, around 20 carefully selected startups from Estonia and around the world start the programme, with only the best-performing teams graduating successfully. The programme offers participants a unique opportunity to develop and test their business models as well as connect with a global network of mentors and investors. The close links with the university also allow students from Delta Management School to play supporting roles in the programme

CDL-Estonia

Vabamu is Estonia’s largest operating non-profit, privately funded museum dedicated to educating locals and visitors about Estonia’s past and the freedoms we have striven for and won. The museum shows how fragile freedom can be, on the one hand, and tells the personal stories of people who have stood up for justice and the rule of law on the other.

The organisation, which originally stemmed from the Museum of Occupations, is now active in three areas: Vabamu museums (the main museum on the Toompea hillside and KGB Prison Cells on Pagari Street), the NoVa youth engagement programme, and Global Conversations, which focuses on international cooperation projects.

Vabamu’s day-to-day activities contribute to ensuring that Estonia’s strong global networks support our freedom at all times. In this way, Vabamu plays an important role in introducing Estonia to the outside world and in making us greater.

vabamu.ee

SA Liberaalne Kodanik (SALK) works openly in support of a liberal worldview. To this end, SALK provides a platform, a network, data and tools for a wide range of actors to better participate in shaping Estonian society.

Salk is born out of the realisation that the liberal and democratic social order which Estonia and much of the Western world has been striving for is more fragile than was thought just 10 or 20 years ago. Societies that until recently were open have become closed, agreements on what is acceptable in politics and the public sphere have eroded.

Institutions designed to stand up for the rights of all of us as individuals and to protect us as a society have come under pressure and often direct attack.

Frequently, these developments are also due to the apathy or ignorance of the members of society themselves. But a society that restricts the rights and freedoms of some people is taking a very dangerous path and is no longer free.

SALK is based on the conviction that democracy must be defended through democratic methods – by increasing freedom, openness and cooperation. SALK works openly, professionally, and argumentatively, based on facts and research, and supports Estonian civil society wherever possible.

salk.ee

Levila is a media lab and a free media channel created in late 2019 to combat marginalisation and fragmentation in Estonia by conveying topical issues to people in an understandable and constructive way. After publishing stories, Levila often follows up through talks, brainstorming sessions or seminars, resulting in greater impact on issues that polarise society.

Levila’s journalistic choices are characterised by the following keywords: important issue, gripping story, and real people. Levila observes and gives people a voice, adding as little as possible of its own judgements or doctrines on how people should think. Levila avoids complex vocabulary and uses the model of narrative journalism to explain issues.

Levila has become one of the drivers of Estonian film journalism. The most significant examples are the documentaries Estcoy-8. Rääkimata lugu and Trail Baltic, as well as the documentary series Nad muutsid Eestit, which started in 2023. Levila has published books (Vapilõvi), made live broadcasts and produced TV programmes (Võimule sinuga).

The article ‘Lahkumisintervjuu’, published in Levila at the end of 2023, tackled governance problems in Estonian healthcare and reached an audience of 75 thousand people. Guest author Priit Tohver will continue to speak on the same topic in TV programmes and at conferences. Last year’s forest-themed blog ‘Kuhu kaob mets’ (‘Where are the forests disappearing?’) led to the organisation by the Ministry of Climate of a forestry data walk involving 60 participants in the spring of 2024.

Major investigative articles are published in Levila not only as text but also in audio format, read by Estonian actors. An expanding focus on video experiments in social media has distributed Levila’s content to more than one million users for the first time in 2023 – and depending on the channel, more than two-thirds of them are from outside Tallinn.

levila.ee