Dubravko Šopar
Pronouns: He/Him
Organisations: Impress; Centre for Social Innovation
Country of origin: Croatia
Profile
Dubravko Šopar is a social entrepreneur who started his career early – he founded three companies and sold two, all while he was in high school. He said, he first pursued a career in aviation, where he became the youngest pilot in his flight club. Later on, he graduated from VERN’ University in Zagreb with a degree in Entrepreneurial Economics in 2006 and earned a Master’s degree in International Business from the DOBA Business School in 2022. Dubravko has been involved in a diverse set of career paths, including investment management, government policymaking and working with NGOs. Currently, he is the executive director for Impress, an NGO based in Daruvar, Croatia. Impress works with national and international partner organisations to provide young people with both formal and informal education and mentorship opportunities. Having personally witnessed how continued preoccupation with past conflicts can affect a community’s present and future, Dubravko said he sought to provide young people from all over the world with opportunities to meet others from different cultures and help them overcome internalised stereotypes. He is also the current director of the Centre for Social Innovation, an organisation based in Zagreb, which provides services including psychological counselling to young people and their families.
Story
‘I could see that people were losing their parents, their children,’ said Dubravko Šopar. He told a story of his friend’s father, Siniša Glavašević, who was one of the few journalists that remained in Vukovar, Croatia as paramilitary forces pushed into the city in 1991. After refusing to leave the city in order to witness and report on the tragedies he observed, he was beaten and killed. Despite Glavašević’s tragic passing, Dubravko highlights how he always had hopeful words to say in his reports, no matter how dire the situation was. ‘We all had someone we lost in the war. I don’t think there was anyone who didn’t lose a loved one,’ said Dubravko. Yet more than two decades after the war, he said that many still hold beliefs that belong in the past. ‘So I wanted to change it, to change the view of the people around me, especially that of some of my friends,’ he said. Dubravko said that making peace with what happened in the past is the key to preventing future conflicts. ‘I want to teach them that we are the new generation, that if we keep looking back at the past we will never be able to move forward, never advance as a society.’
Dubravko has founded over ten youth initiatives throughout his life, but the one organisation he seems to dedicate most of his time to is Impress. Impress helps children and young people with their social and academic development through various activities, workshops and events, allowing members to get to know new individuals from different fields of work. Youth exchange is another area of activity Impress is involved in. This is very important, according to Dubravko, as intercultural dialogue is essential for young people to overcome negative patterns of thinking that linger with older generations.
He said Impress was founded in a small town with a population of 8,000 and a staff of four. The organisation has faced a variety of issues throughout its fifteen years of existence. Perhaps the most prominent issue was funding. Some events could be fully financed through public donations, such as the International Youth Week, which Impress organises annually. Many other projects that needed the input of experts had to be postponed or cancelled altogether due to a lack of consistent funding for the experts’ salaries. The NGO, however, managed to tackle most of these issues by cooperating with the European Social Fund. Another problem that proved to be more challenging was that as an NGO, Impress had to work with many different governments throughout the years. Establishing credibility and securing government cooperation every four years proved to be quite demanding.
Dubravko said he remains passionate towards his work at Impress. To those seeking to start their own initiative, he advises surrounding themselves with equally devoted individuals. He said, ‘It is essential to find as many people as you can that are as motivated as you to help you create and run your initiative.’
Published in 2025