Kurk Lietuvai (Create Lithuania) — Paid Public-Sector Fellowships to Reverse Brain Drain

Kurk Lietuvai (Create Lithuania) is a government talent-attraction programme run by Invest Lithuania, the national investment promotion agency, since 2012. Each year it recruits roughly 20 professionals — originally targeted at the Lithuanian diaspora and later opened to international candidates of any nationality — through a competitive process supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Lithuanian embassies abroad. Selected fellows sign a one-year paid contract (around €2,600 gross per month) and deliver two consecutive six-month projects embedded inside Lithuanian ministries and public agencies, working alongside civil servants on named policy or governance problems.
Over its first six years the programme delivered 180 fellowship projects, rising to roughly 300 over its first decade. Invest Lithuania and independent reporting both cite a long-term retention rate of about 80% among alumni, with more than 40% going on to take public-sector jobs after their fellowship — including some who have become deputy ministers, mayors' advisers and members of parliament. The programme was co-financed by the European Union in its early years and has been cited by the United Nations and UNESCO as a model for reversing skilled emigration.
The available figures are self-reported by the programme and its administering agency rather than drawn from an independent, peer-reviewed evaluation — a caveat worth noting given the programme's small, deliberately selective annual cohort (about 20 people) relative to Lithuania's wider emigration outflows.

Read the full analysis: https://kurklt.lt/en/i-want-to-participate