Empower Youth to Transform Education & Systems

Summer is here! For most oikos Chapters, this means it’s time for a well-deserved break, a chance to wind down and refresh after an eventful semester behind us. As we reach the halfway point of the year, it’s the perfect time to look back at this period and celebrate the important moments and accomplishments.

oikos Community meets in Lisbon

What better way to start off this review than with a throwback to the Community Gathering in Lisbon! It checked all the requirements for a memorable meetup - an inspired local chapter, a quality program, and a vibrant host city. In late February, the Ocean brought morning fog, occasional drizzle, and most notably, the oikos Community to Lisbon.

Blue Futures

The Blue Futures Conference at the NOVA SBE campus put the Ocean - an inseparable part of the host city and Portugal as a whole. Visiting oikees, alongside local students, attended the program featuring the leading Portuguese voices in marine preservation. The importance of the Ocean echoed in their sentiments, underlining the necessity of action and pinpointing successful stories from around the world.

The focal point of the conference was the Blue Economy - a model that strengthens the resilience of marine ecosystems, while providing sustainable economic growth, creating jobs, and improving livelihoods. It dived deeper into topics like marine pollution, blue carbon, as well as the legislative implications and challenges.

Community Gathering

The conference was only a part of the oikee experience. The Community gathering prepared by the Lisbon Chapter was the centerpiece - a unique space for oikees to meet up, exchange and learn. Carefully tailored skills labs challenged participants to put their ideas into action through interactive participation in workshops.

Keeping with the broader Blue Futures theme, as well as the local context, these sessions highlighted both the complexity of sustainability challenges and the importance of youth leadership in taking action. They encouraged a regenerative approach in evaluating the interlinks between industries and ecosystems. Furthermore, sustainability remains only one step, and reframing their relationship as a symbiotic rather than an exploitative relationship is the final goal.

We are a community of leaders! Being a leader means continuous learning and growing, and the best way to learn is to share experiences. Whether it’s from a fellow oikee, a young climate activist or a European MP, attending chapter members could take away plenty of energy and motivation from Lisbon. It is what makes the gathering so important. It opened up a space for chapters to share their impact, voice their needs, and our role is to show them they’re heard.

Chapter Accelerator Launch

It was this philosophy that led us to create Chapter Accelerator - a new program unveiled in Lisbon. Over the years, we’ve listened to our Chapters and observed their struggles and concerns in creating meaningful change. To overcome them, strengthen chapter continuity and our Community’s resilience, we created a year-round program to build our members' capacities.

We kicked off the Accelerator in March with monthly learning sessions through December, with enrollment on a rolling basis year-round. It supports active oikos chapters in strengthening their leadership, community-building capacities, their initiatives’ impact, and meaningful connection to the global oikos Community.

Since its launch, we’ve hosted 4 sessions, with each welcoming new participants and growing in the number of chapters represented. These sessions explored topics of Change Leadership, Resource Mapping and Alumni Value, Ecosystem Mapping, Organizational Cycles, Strategy and Impact Goals Setting. 

Chapter Whisper Visits

The Lisbon meetup is long over, but the ripples that it set in motion gently spread across our Community. One such ripple is the Whisper Visits! Discussing what the Community means to them and listening to the stories of Alumni, Chapter members came up with an idea of informal meetups. The concept is simple - a group of oikees from one or more chapters team up and visit a city with an oikos Chapter.

But why does this matter? Ever since the 2020 pandemic, the travel dynamic has changed for most students. Even six years later, our in-person events don’t reach the pre-pandemic participation numbers. Despite more prominent online engagement nowadays, many oikees expressed their eagerness for in-person conversations. Therefore, the less formal, but more frequent visits presented themselves as a good starting point.

From then on, it didn’t take long to break the ice! Leading by example, oikos International Board Member Zuzia Bielska of oikos Warsaw reached out and got together with local oikees on her visit to Barcelona. Later on, a group of oikees visited Brussels and met up with the local Chapter’s active and alumni members. Additionally, co-president Jule Neumann has visited oikos Berlin chapter in Paris at the end of their internship program. 

Alumni Pathways

We pride ourselves with thousands of alumni who have at one point been a part of an oikos Chapter. This year we've undergone an effort to strengthen the connection between alumni and the oikos Community by revisiting the ways for them to engage with our network. In February we started gathering an alumni database which has so far gathered over 96 contacts of alumni eager to engage. This includes organizing in-person alumni gatherings, speaking at oikos events, supporting oikos organizational development and offering students opportunities. Interested, send us a message and we will send you the link!

Alumni Meetups

Whisper visits are not much different from oikos Alumni meetups. Former oikees with a strong connection of having been a part of our Community often plan their meetups on their own initiative all over the world. Over the past few months, we’ve seen an Alumni meetup in Ljubljana. Initiated by oikos Co-president Jule Neumann on her visit to the Urban Future conference hosted in the city that was once home to an oikos Chapter.

New faces at oikos International

Over the past few months, we’ve seen an influx of new energy into our team, with a new Board Member joining alongside four new volunteers. Following the Spring Legislative Meeting, Amaan Deshpande of oikos Graz was elected to the oikos International 2026 Board as the 5th member. Dylan from oikos Warsaw joined our team in January as a volunteer, and in the following months, Neaz, Sadia, and Iman joined him.

Spring Legislative Meeting

The Spring Legislative Meeting took place in April. Aside from the previously mentioned addition to the oikos International Board, a few more important decisions were made. Amendments to the constitution introduced changes to the oikos Chapter minimum reporting and engagement requirements, as well as changing the Co-president term from two to three years with a single re-election limit. Furthermore, dormant chapters in Baku, Bayreuth, Cologne, and Witten/Herdecke were officially closed due to prolonged inactivity.

Conferences in June

The work mainly happens in building strong connections - in person. Our team has travelled around the world not only meeting chapter and alumni, but also attending partner events that create strategic partnerships within the ecosystem. 

• Paris, CLADEA Conference: we're in a process of developing stronger relationships within the ecosystem of business higher education, therefore our co-president Jule Neumann was invited to CLADEA conference in Paris to speak at one of the panel discussions. This event opened many doors to new collaborations and future oikos growth in Latin America. 
• Jakarta, Global Sustainable Development Congress by Times Higher Education: Together with HESI-SAG (Higher Education for Sustainability Initiative - Student Action Group), oikos International co-president Patricija Zizyte joined the Global Sustainable Development Congress in Jakarta, Indonesia. The goal was to strengthen the student voice in the conversations of higher education transformation. The week has offered many platforms for engagement, including student-led workshop, Global Student Summit, moderation of Sulitest panel discussion and a seat at the closing panel discussion. 

Over the past months, oikos International has continued to strengthen its global network of student-led chapters (local groups) working to transform business and economics education. Through leadership development, international exchange, and new strategic initiatives, we are empowering young people to become agents of change within their universities and future workplaces.

One of the most significant milestones was the oikos International Chapter Conference, held in Lisbon at the end of February. The conference brought together student leaders from multiple countries for several days of learning, collaboration, and community building. For many participants, this was the first time meeting peers from other chapters and realizing that their local initiatives are part of a much larger global movement. The conference created space for sharing best practices, strengthening leadership skills, and developing new ideas for transforming economics and business education from within universities.

Building on this momentum, we have also launched the Chapter Accelerator Program, a 10-month learning and action journey designed to strengthen the capacity of our local chapters. The program supports students in developing leadership skills, strategic thinking, and collaborative approaches to systemic change. Through expert-led sessions, peer learning, and practical tools, participants learn how to translate their motivation for sustainability into concrete initiatives that reshape curricula, student engagement, and partnerships within their institutions.

Additionally, oikos has continued to foster international collaboration across its global ecosystem. Chapters are increasingly sharing resources, co-developing projects, and supporting each other in navigating the challenges of driving change within academic institutions. This growing network of engaged students is essential for scaling the impact of our work.

Across these initiatives, the core focus remains the same: empowering young people to challenge outdated economic paradigms and to actively shape more sustainable, regenerative, and inclusive systems.

Your support makes this work possible. By investing in youth leadership and global collaboration, you are helping students around the world build the knowledge, confidence, and community needed to transform education and contribute to systemic change.