Liudmila Mecajeva
Liudmila Mecajeva is a co-founder and managing director of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a Lithuanian NGO, charity and support foundation, started in 1994. Today, SIF is recognized as a leading Lithuanian NGO for building democracy, protecting women’s rights and equality, encouraging diversity, and promoting the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups.
Since 1994 she has been a head Coordinator for 18 European and national projects and a Manager for Lithuania in 32 European projects and 3 International projects. A list of these projects can be found in “Projects”. L. Mecajeva works very collaboratively having developed partnerships with organizations from practically all European countries, Uzbekistan, Georgia, and the USA. Mrs. Mecajeva was selected by the European Commission as an independent expert during 25 assessment sessions of European project proposals.
In addition, Liudmila Mecajeva was a co-founder of the Lithuanian NGO Coalition for Protection of Women’s Human Rights. Today, this coalition includes about 60 women NGOs in Lithuania. In cooperation with the coalition’s members, Liudmila developed three Alternative Reports to United Nations on the implementation of the UN Conventions (CEDAW and CESCR) in Lithuania and presented them to UN committees in both New York (2000 and 2010) and Geneva, Switzerland (2006). Liudmila is one of the founders and an active member of the Lithuanian Women’s Lobby, a member organization of the European Women’s Lobby. The Italian Women’s Lobby also selected Mrs. Mecajeva as a trainer for an European-Aid project for NGOs focusing on improving women’s economic status in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China.
In 2012, Liudmila Mecajeva, in cooperation with partners from USA, founded Social Innovations Global, a Colorado-based non-profit corporation (www.signonprofit.org). She is a founding board member and currently a president of this organization.
Before founding Social Innovation Fund, L.Mecajeva was working as a software engineer at the Measuring Equipment Research and Development Institute, Kaunas and led the computerization department at the Television Equipment Research and Development Institute in Kaunas, Lithuania.
Mrs. Mecajeva has a MS in Computer Science from the Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania and a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania.