How a community helps teenagers achieve their full potential
How Changemakers Academy uses Zelos
Changemakers Academy is an Estonian youth programme that helps 14-to-19-year-olds develop social enterprise skills through real, hands-on work. The programme has grown from an idea on paper to 102 youngsters, 17 mentors, and 11 partner enterprises. Estonia’s Ministry of Education named it Act of the Year. Civil Society named it Inspirer of the Year.
The programme runs on a simple bet: teenagers can change the world if they believe they can.
Changemakers Academy uses Zelos to gamify the whole programme. Coordinators post a task once, and it reaches all 17 teams instantly. Teams claim tasks, complete them for points, and watch their progress on a live leaderboard. The result is a clear structure of small, meaningful steps that keeps 100+ teenagers engaged for months.
The challenge
The biggest barrier in any youth programme is self-belief. Convincing a 14-year-old that they can build a real business serving real customers takes time, repetition, and constant small wins. The programme exists to build that confidence step by step.
Students aged 14 to 19 generate over €87,000 for partner enterprises within two months. Reaching that level of commercial output takes patience. The programme’s job is first to convince teenagers they can deliver real work for real businesses, and then to give them the structure to do it.
That kind of confidence-building requires lots of small tasks, clear rules, visible progress, and recognition for effort. The programme also has to scale: 17 teams, dozens of mentors, hundreds of weekly steps to track.
The programme initially ran on an Excel sheet, with points for task completion tracked manually. As it grew past a handful of teams, that workflow stopped scaling. Managing 17 teams the same way would have been unworkable.
The solution
Changemakers Academy uses Zelos as a gamified youth engagement app. A task posted once reaches all 17 teams at the same time. Teams claim and complete tasks for points, and the live leaderboard shows where everyone stands.
The mechanics are imported straight from computer games: clear rules, visible progress, and rewards for completion. Built into the daily rhythm of a youth programme, they hold teenagers’ attention across the months it takes to build real social enterprise skills.
The shift from Excel to Zelos also freed up the team for the work that matters most: face-to-face mentorship, watching young people overcome the barriers in their own heads, and helping them take the next small step.
The results
17 teams of 14-to-19-year-olds generated over €87,000 for 11 partner enterprises in two months.
Changemakers Academy has grown from an idea on paper to a programme of 102 youngsters, 17 mentors, and 11 partner enterprises. Partners get measurable commercial outcomes. Participants get measurable confidence.
Estonia’s Ministry of Education named the programme Act of the Year. Civil Society named it Inspirer of the Year. The gamified structure is credited with keeping teenagers engaged through the long, patient work of building self-belief.
Two national awards and €87,000 every two months: the founding bet is paying out.