Bio

Irina Janevska is co-founder and president of the Organization for Social Innovation “ARNO“ (www.arno.org.mk). Irina was born and raised in Skopje, in society that made her eyes and ears open to many pains and challenges. That made her to commit her teen and later her adult life to volunteering and working in the third sector on different initiatives: moving from youth advocacy to edutainment, and social and green economy in the last years of her civic engagement.

In 2013 Irina co-founded ARNO with the mission and commitment to bring innovative approaches to help solve the modern social glitches and community challenges. In the past 6 years she is organizing the national Green Ideas competition that seeks to stimulate and encourage innovation for green business ideas at local level; green ideas that utilize local resources and revitalize disappearing traditional production chains and community-based markets. A green startup for upcycling furniture, a mobile app that awards citizens for taking a walk/bicycling, bio smart rise produced with environmental benefits, eco-magician that teaches kids to refuse, reuse and recycle waste are few of the Macedonian regionally awarded green businesses that make ARNO and Irina super proud and confident that even small country can create success stories and inspiration for the future of the green economy.

Irina believes that philanthropy is the starting point for thinking about how the economy can work for people and nature. As Ph.D. Candidate she currently explores the culture of giving and the local landscape of social economy.