We are continuing our journey to democratize education with technology and we firmly believe in UN Global Compact initiative.

We are a small start-up, and we failed to achieve the last years targets however we are satisfied that we have provided to more than 100.000 people free or affordable education in 190 countries around the world.

We will continue our mission based on our original vision and strive to liberate human minds with education all around the world without any discrimination based on gender, color or age.

The two founders, Sotiris Makrygiannis and Sergey Gerasimenko, are committed and passionate about our goal, and we will maintain Eliademy as the most affordable learning platform on the planet.

CBTec actively supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in all of its work. CBTec is especially adapting article 26 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regarding all peoples right to education, in its entire practice. We are committed to working towards a democratization of education with technology. Through our work, we aim to maintain the online learning platform Eliademy.com free of charge for those who can’t afford the paid solutions. We want to influence our partners and customers on our goal and work in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for us to work towards offering people equal and affordable opportunities for education.

To underline our commitment, we have written a Code of Conduct with guidelines on how CBTec can work in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as efficiently as possible. As part of the implementation of the Code of Conduct, we want to establish relevant training for all the employees, partners, investors and parties subjected to CBTecs work so that all are aware of the defined goals and human rights in practice.

To underline our commitment, we have written a Code of Conduct with guidelines on how CBTec can work in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as efficiently as possible. As part of the implementation of the Code of Conduct, we want to establish relevant training for all the employees, partners, investors and parties subjected to CBTecs work so that all are aware of the defined goals and human rights in practice.

For the next year, we aim to educate 1.000. 000 people free of charge via our platform. Monthly meetings are held for members of CBTec to discuss progress and development regarding human rights in our work. In these meetings topics such as target areas for a social cause and how we can improve our work for free education for everyone, everywhere, anytime are regularly addressed. For next year we want to implement scorecards to monitor progress against the UN targets, this was work promised for last year but to due to overwhelming amount of work didn’t manage to produce the right KPIS.

We inform our employees and partners about our mission of educating people. CBTec works with organizations representing a wide amount of businesses, amongst others training houses and start-up incubators. This is why we are actively informing partners, investors, customers and employees about our commitment to making education available for all and our work with human rights.

Some examples of initiatives that are currently in implementation are:
• We are working on developing a brief training program for all new employees for them to be aware of the goal.
• We are working with Eminus Academy, a project held by UN-Habitat to help young adults in Africa make their way out of poverty by teaching them entrepreneurship. The project is in a stage of further development for the second run.
• We collaborate with NGOs and NPOs as part of our CSR program by supporting and helping them with their campaigns. By supporting non-profit and educational organisations, we help to raise awareness about the organisations causes with courses on Eliademy. Hence, CBTec takes one step further to the fulfilment of our main aim as a company.

All employees handle following company policies, national as well as international laws and regulations on Human Rights. We encourage our partners and employees to report to our management if they suspect wrongful doing in regards to our Code of Conduct and CSR. We focus on feedback from formalised relationships due to the practical solutions and their knowledge on CBTecs work.

Progress is monitored with careful and frequent dialogues with the partners and employees. With mutually agreed target setting the employee and managers agree on goals to be achieved.

Today we educate over 100 000 people via Massive Online Courses on our platform for free or at a very affordable price. We estimate that with a 10 US$ admission per online course, we have trained 50 000 people with MooCs and the overall contribution of 500 000 US$ to the global society. Much of this value was created with teachers that volunteer to our cause and offers their service for free. We want to empower all people to spread their knowledge and today we have instructors of all ages and nationalities. As an example, we would like to mention Tarmo Toikkanen, Tero Toivanen, Vuokko Kangas, Tiina Partanen, Minna Konttinen for providing free courses to over 1000 teachers. Our Learning management tool, that is free (comparable options costs around 45US$ per user) serves over 100.000 users as a free cloud-based classroom with an estimated value of 1 80 000 US$ invested back into community. Besides, we have promised to give back 25% of our profits as investments back into the community. This year we financed Slush Educational track and gave the opurtunitity to over 12.000 attendees to learn about modern educational technologies.

We are collaborating with FIBS and during the year of 2014-2015 we hope to educate companies in the values of multicultural and diverse workplaces.

No legal cases, investigations, rulings or fines related to Human Rights violations have been connected to CBTec, partners or investors (according to our knowledge). No reports have been filed on wrongful doings in regards to our Code of Conduct or our CSR-guidelines.

To date, no external audits on human rights performance have been done. This is explained by the fact that CBTec is still a small company and unrecognised for a need to perform external audits on this matter and has, for example, no factory operations.

CBTec is committed and dedicated to offering all employees equal opportunities for personal development. All work done subjected to CBTec is done in consensus with ILO Core Conventions and the Global Compact Labour Principles. To underline our commitment we have included Global Compact Labour principles to our Code of Conduct. When hiring, candidates are always chosen based on qualification. No discrimination is made based on ethnicity, native countries, culture, religion, sexual orientation, disablements or gender. In our Code of Conduct, we have stated guidelines for the company members on how to avoid discrimination and promote equal treatment.

All employees at CBTec work under valid contracts, which follow our company guidelines and Finnish labour laws. CBTec is operating accordance with the Finnish Employment Contract Act (Työsopimuslaki). We work with labour rights as presented in our Code of Conduct and in agreement with local laws on labour rights and the principles stated in ILO Core Conventions. In our Code of Conduct, we have set guidelines for the company members to ensure good working conditions for all.

For the forthcoming years, we focus on implementing individual inductions with every new employee for the new employee to be up to speed and motivated as soon as possible. In case of resignation an exit discussion is also conducted to ensure that any open, unresolved issue is resolved and learning are taken. For CBTec, it is of paramount importance that any potential exit is handled as constructively and positively as possible for the benefit of both parties future prosperity. For next year, we want to implement scorecards to monitor progress for our employees to keep them motivated and focused on results and their individual goals.

We have active discussions internally both informally and formally, to prevent discrimination and to keep an active consultation with employees and other stakeholders. Distribution on responsibilities is an open discussion and supported by the Finnish Employment Contract Act and our labour policies.

CBTec offers all employees good working conditions and salaries and benefits higher than the unions recommendations to the permanent employees. All employees are insured and provided basic health care.

All CBTec employees have been hired based on qualification. Our work against discrimination mostly consists of active discussions on preventing discrimination at the workplace. We are working by the Finnish employment act and the guidelines stated in our CSR Guidelines and our Code of Conduct to regulate the work at hand. We encourage employees and partners to report back to us if they suspect any wrongful doing in regards to stated labour policies or any other act that could be seen as non-confirmative with prevailing labour laws or our written Code of Conduct.

When hiring, all candidates who have applied will be considered and treated equally and fairly. The final selection is done based only on qualification, competence and based on an objective fit with the team. With 13 people currently employed representing nine nationalities CBTec is one of the most multicultural start-up companies in Finland. We are recognised by FIBS as one example of sustainable businesses in Finland with potential solutions to change the world through education.

There have not been any incidents subjected to CBTec in regards to violations of the Global Compact Labour principles.

Our employees are always hired based on skills and qualifications, and all have contracts containing benefits such as a basic medical service and insurance on top of the required by law to secure the health of our employees. Today CBTec offers salaries higher than the union’s recommendations to all of our full-time employees.

CBTec is operating by Finnish environmental laws and international standards and regulations, which we adapt to our work in our Environmental Policy. The policy follows internationally set standards and treaties. CBTecs actions do not expose a great threat to the environment since we do not have any factory operations. We are targeting improvement in our office by proactively preventing any and all harmful actions we encounter.

We are working on receiving relevant certifications in the field of environmental sustainability for next year. For next year, we want to implement scorecards or other tools to monitor our environmental progress. Our target is to have at least one more certificate by this time next year. Our main targets for the year are: receiving certification, a more environmentally friendly office and well-informed employees.

We are working in accordance to our written Environmental Policy, which is made available online and at our office. We want to encourage both employees and partners to take part in our environmental work. We encourage parties subjected to our work to report back to us if they suspect wrongful doing in regards to our Environmental Policy. We are targeting improvement in our environmental work by encouraging decisions made with environmental consciousness. For example today almost all of our employers commute to work with the bike or public transport and almost all of our business meetings not held in Helsinki are held over VoIP to prevent unnecessary flying. We actively approach NGOS within the environmental field and want to contribute and support their causes and work.

We are working on establishing a training program in basic environmental work and consumption of recourses set up for our staff. The needed information to work for the maintaining a certification has been retrieved and the process for complying with these has been initiated.

All employees handle their actions regarding environmental consciousness. We believe that with the right knowledge all can make wise decisions and act with environmental concern. We are implementing a new environmental program to educate our employees to make our office greener and employees more aware of the problematic within the environmental field.

We work in preventing wrongful doing and take precautionary measures to prevent the potential risk our action may contribute to. We have approached NGOs within the environmental field. Our 2014-2015 office was certified as a Green Office and almost all of our employers commute to work with either bike or public transport. Recycle bins are placed at the office, and long-distance meetings are held over VoIP to prevent flying.

CBTec has a newly updated Environmental Policy and is currently working on adjusting the policy to fit the company’s activities in the best way providing the best possible environmental work. We work with self-auditing in the environmental field and to date there has not been any reason to bring in external auditing due to CBTec’s low potential of Environmental hazards and the size of the company.

CBTec has never had any incidents related to our environmental work but we encourage the public, investors, employees and partners to be critical and report any suspicions of wrongful doing in regards to our company policies or national as well as international laws.

CBTec has a zero-tolerance policy to bribes, corruption and extortion, stated in our code of conduct and company’s policies. We are working by the UN Convention Against Corruption in all our work with prevention as well as international cooperation as our main targets. We are working in conjunction with all local and relevant laws on corruption, bribery and extortion. We adapt the “four-eyes” principle to reporting of costs on behalf of CBTec.

For cost compensation we follow a "4 eyes" policy, each cost reported on behalf of CBTec has to be approved by an employee and a member of the management before submitting to accounting. Since being global company, CBTec respects other cultures but do not accept or provide any gifts with a value over 200€ in Finland or the equivalent in the local area.

We aim at having a well-established policy regarding bribery, extortion and corruption, including hands-on tools for employees to use in their everyday negotiations and work. The policy should be based on international treaties such as the UN Convention Against Corruption and training program for the employees will be included.

Each cost occurred by CEO are monitored and approved by the Board of Directors. Any costs an employee is exposed to (travel expenses, material purchases, etc.) are only reimbursed against original receipts after CEO’s approval. All books are externally audited. Project based books are audited several times a year or when needed. Once a year all books are audited.

We encourage employees, partners and the public to report any wrongful doing in regards to company policy or Finnish laws.

CBTec is developing an anti-corruption plan, which will list possible risks and mitigation strategy for them. This plan is updated every six months, or on the need to basis. Training will follow as part of the implementation of any revised policies.

Our CEO has approved all costs encountered by employees. In the same manner as the board of directors approves expenses encountered by CEO. The personal cost expenditure presented by our CEO need to be approved by Board of Directors. There have not been any incidents regarding CBTec, partners or investors and corruption, bribery or extortion. CBTec has not been involved with any legal cases, and no complaints or reports have been filed. In case of incidents, we follow the guidelines set in our Code of Conduct and Finnish Employment Act.

All our public projects are audited extensively implicating all financial operations, time reporting and cost claims. An independent auditor audits all our accounting several times a year and written reports on the review are publicly available at PRH (Patent- a rekisteihallitus).

Accountings are continuously checked externally, and we are given feedback on improvement, which is then implemented. Our books and accounts are externally audited.