Introducing the BeChangeMaker 2025 finalists bound for Dubrovnik

Their business ideas have the potential to change the world. As four months of intensive training, advice, and specialized support come to an end, the young finalists of BeChangeMaker 2025 are now better equipped to make it happen. With only a few days left before they travel to WorldSkills General Assembly 2025, the teams are polishing their pitches.

They will deliver them in front of a global audience on 14 October, as part of WorldSkills Croatia Conference 2025. WorldSkills Members’ delegates, policymakers, education practitioners, and industry representatives will have an opportunity to join a panel of judges in deciding the winner for this year’s programme.

Meet the five finalists in BeChangeMaker 2025 and find out more about the problems they want to address and the solutions they are proposing.

AstMask, Denmark

Lucas Hauge and Emil Dahl have created a fun way for kids with asthma to take their medication – the FunSpacer. A spacer is a tube or chamber that attaches to a metered-dose inhaler, making medicine move more easily and deeper into the lungs. However, many children resist the treatment, turning the daily administration of a crucial treatment into a struggle and often forcing parents to restrain their child. This struggle can lead to improper treatment and cause permanent damage to the lungs.

“I’ve had asthma since childhood. I’ve experienced the fear myself,” explains Emil, while stressing that this is a “serious, but silent problem.” That’s why they designed a child-friendly spacer to reduce feelings of restraint and fear, transforming medication time from a struggle into a playful routine. Made with 3D printers in exciting shapes such as a dragon or a unicorn, the FunSpacer is a mask that lets imagination fly and medication in.

Lucas and Emil have now produced their fifth prototype, earning awards and raising interest from families and hospitals. With 72,000 children aged two to seven living with asthma in Denmark alone, the team hopes to reach seven percent of them in their first year on the market.

Glovatrix, India

While delivering her last online pitch, Aishwarya Karnataki muted herself for 10 seconds. “Was that uncomfortable? Did you feel like you were missing out on something?” she asked the judges. “Well, this is how deaf people feel every day. And this feeling of being left out, unheard, and disconnected is heartbreaking.” Inspired by a childhood friendship, Glovatrix was born to help deaf people communicate with dignity and independence.

Glovatrix is a smart AI-based glove that translates sign language into speech, and speech into text, in real time. This is how it works: sensors in the glove capture data, which is transmitted via a mobile app to the cloud, where predictions are made. The signs are also displayed on the user’s screen as text, allowing the deaf person to see exactly what they are communicating.

Aishwarya and her colleague, Rudra Ghodke, have already conducted 18 pilot and beta programmes. A successful pilot led a hotel chain to issue a corporate mandate to hire ten deaf employees in all 110 of its outlets across India. “That’s 1,000 jobs unlocked – and 1,000 gloves in demand. More hotel chains and industries are now joining in,” says Aishwarya.

PaperPods, Indonesia

Tania Callista and Ivane Nava’s country is considered one of the world’s lungs. Indonesia has the third-largest tropical rainforest, a common resource that is now disappearing due to the increase in demand for paper production. While businesses are part of the problem, pressure to meet environmental, sustainability, and governance (ESG) goals can enable them to be part of the solution.

“Solutions in the market stop at recycling, but recycling is not enough,” says Tania, who together with Ivane has created PaperPods. “We are embedding our paper product with seeds so that after use, it will grow into plants, going back into the natural cycle.” Through a subscription model, their company collects paper waste from offices, which is then sorted by a third party, and then recycled. PaperPods only employs retired women artisans, providing them with a source of extra income and a sense of connection.

The result is plantable paper, ideal to replace single-use paper such as visiting cards or brochures – containing not just information, but life.

Youth Re:Linked, Canada

Astara Van der Jagt and her collaborator Emel Tabaku are tackling one of the most urgent yet overlooked crises facing youth today: loneliness. One in four young people globally – over 400 million – report persistent loneliness, with even higher rates among racialized, low-income, and newcomer youth. The consequences are far-reaching, from lower academic performance to reduced lifetime earnings. In Ottawa alone, where they are both based, modest reductions in youth loneliness could save $600 million in socioeconomic costs and nearly $3 billion in lifetime earnings.

“Youth crave spaces of joyful, meaningful belonging, and that’s what we set out to build,” says Astara. That is why they created Youth Re:Linked, a social venture “reimagining connection in an age of disconnection.” With over 15 years of combined experience in youth engagement, equity, and systems change, they designed the Belonging Studio: a replicable, immersive pop-up where young people come together to share stories, build futures, and spark a sense of belonging. Through card-based games, storytelling, and collective world-building, the model is playful, culturally grounded, and designed for anyone – teachers, librarians, or youth leaders – to use independently.

The pair have already established strong roots through the Civic Imagination Lab in Ottawa and Toronto and are now piloting their toolkit with local schools and youth organizations. Their goal is to scale the Belonging Studio so that youth everywhere can access joyful spaces of connection — because, as they say, “belonging is not a luxury, it’s the foundation.”

ReGen, Nepal

In Nepal, the climate crisis is shaping children’s lives in devastating ways. ReGen has developed a child-friendly, crisis-ready kit designed to support children in disaster situations.

“If children can’t name the problem, how can they lead the solution?” ask Akriti Pant, Sonal Shrestha, and Priyadarshini Tripathi, the team behind ReGen Climate Lab. Each kit contains emotion cards, story-based healing tools, and curriculum-aligned mini-lessons to help children feel safe, calm, and able to keep learning — even in times of crisis. Complementing the kit is an offline-first web app packed with interactive challenges, playful climate stories, and peer-led activities. Unlike most approaches that focus only on climate literacy or disaster response, ReGen uniquely blends emotional healing, climate learning, and action into one holistic package.

So far, ReGen has tested its prototype with more than 520 students across four districts, with encouraging results. A working version of the app has been trialled with nearly 100 students, showing strong engagement. To scale impact, the team is working with schools to integrate the kits into annual curricula, ensuring they are available before disasters strike, and distributing them as emergency aid where needed. With every kit and every child reached, ReGen is helping build a climate-resilient future “one play at a time.”

ReGen enters the final as this year’s wildcard team. They narrowly missed out on a place but impressed the judges with their potential throughout the programme. Their chance came when the eligible participants from team EduGoals AI could not attend in person due to travel constraints, opening a place in the final. EduGoals AI created an artificial intelligence coach to help underserved rural students prepare for exams. While they cannot be in Dubrovnik this time, WorldSkills and the HP Foundation will continue to support them with post-programme coaching.

BeChangeMaker, an initiative by WorldSkills and the HP Foundation, supported by UNESCO-UNEVOC, enables skilled young people to develop innovative business ideas that address social and environmental challenges. Now in its ninth edition, BeChangeMaker has empowered hundreds of young people from around the world to promote community development and contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Join the young entrepreneurs and watch them pitch their ideas live on Facebook – Tuesday, 14 October 2025 (14:15–15:15 CET)).