Social Business Conference InTSEnSE in Vilnius, Lithuania

On 8th of November a Social Business Conference, “Internationalising Trading for Social Enterprise Sustainability and Education” (InTSEnSE) was held in Vilnius city municipality, Lithuania. The international InTSEnSE conference was a great success since 95 participants from 11 countries (Pakistan, Latvia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania) attended the conference. In order to attract more people with an intercultural background, it was decided that the language of the conference would be English.

During the conference, Rasa Žilionė and Milda Koženiauskaitė from the Innovation Office presented InTSEnSE project’s 4 intellectual outputs:

1. A Framework for the Internationalization of Social Enterprise Trading;
2. Support mechanisms for Internationalising the Trading of Social enterprise;
3. Exemplars of social enterprise international trading practices;
4. Educational and training materials for international trading for social enterprise sustainability.

In addition, three local speakers were invited to share their experience and knowledge regarding the social enterprise establishment and internationalization. The following topics were covered by conference speakers:

1. “Starting a Social Business” by Tim Van Wijk, founder of the restaurant “First pancake”
2. “Social Business by Ethiopian Refugee Entrepreneur” by Eskedar Maštavičienė, who founded her own business “Eskedar Coffee”
3. „Social Entrepreneurship in Lithuania – where we are right now“ by Aušra Pulauskaitė from “Enterprising Lithuania”

Finally, each speaker and participant of the event received an InTSEnSE conference certificate. By the end of the conference participants were invited to participate in an unofficial contact-making part.

The event was organized while implementing Erasmus+ project “Internationalising Trading for Social Enterprise Sustainability and Education”.