Marija studied and started her career focused on working directly with vulnerable populations, especially children at risk. Later on, she realized the potential of the social economy to tackle some of the most pressing issues faced by children and communities. This is when she decided to pivot her career toward capacity development of social entrepreneurs. Within the Reach for Change foundation, she had the opportunity to both support social entrepreneurs directly and to work with the teams across markets in Europe and Africa to ensure that the programs delivered by the foundation were targeted, efficient and effective. The reason why these programs work, she quickly found, was because all of them are based on partnerships – different stakeholders, from different sectors, working together to make the world a better place. Because neither one of us can make the change holistic and sustainable. Her recent projects within the foundation are, therefore, more than ever, focused on ecosystem development activities, to make sure that different stakeholders have the channels, platforms and mechanisms in place to work together.
