Social Entrepreneurship
I started participating in non-profits when I was sixteen; I became a manager in a School of Municipal Management, where we helped share democratic values among high school and university students in Russia. I was doing it because I believe in human rights and felt this was important. It was a project supported by The U.S. Russia Foundation.
It helped with my personal development and skills, which I used later to help local communities, and before I got twenty, I had already organized multiple social enterprises:
- Free soup meals for homeless people
- Fundraising for Cancer Treatment
- Free Cinema tickets for Orphan Kids
- Eco-events to clean neighborhoods
And I remember how happy I was when, after we cleaned a big city lake, we got enough attention to make the municipal government decide to rebuild the lake area.
Because of my social enterprises, I was invited to study for free at the Moscow School of Civic Education, a project of the Council of Europe.
During the presidential elections in 2012, I was very disappointed with Russian politics, which was the time when I was organizing rallies for fair elections. That’s when I encountered FSB agents (Former soviet KGB) and received my first life threats from the Centre for Combating Extremism.
After that, I was invited by the U.S. Congress Program to visit the White House and U.S. municipalities as a local community leader to exchange knowledge about democratic leadership.
At that time, I was inspired by the M.I.T. concept of Fablabs and visited several Fablabs in the US. I visited Germany as well and one of the oldest Hackerspaces in the world – C-Base in Berlin.
I decided to open a non-profit, Fablab, to provide a space for tech enthusiasts to build their projects and educate people about new technologies.
For two years, I and my team gave lectures to more than 1000 students and helped multiple projects come to life, from an idea to a prototype.
One of our most interesting projects was a solar sail deployment system for a satellite.
After I moved to Thailand, I decided to make a Fablab in Phuket to gather tech entrepreneurs and provide tech education for local communities.
Our team provided lectures and master classes on 3D printing, Laser-cutting, Robotics, Game Development, and Music Education. I’m glad that most of the Fablab members are Thai tech enthusiasts.
Regular meetups help foreign digital nomads, and expats connect with talented local entrepreneurs.
One of the biggest community projects is the Ocean Cleaning Drone.