Concept submission for Orzeł Innowacji 2026

🌉 Mostek

AI support for real integration in Poland.

Mostek is a mobile-first web application designed to help newcomers in Poland move from functional survival to everyday belonging. It supports real-life integration through guided action, language confidence, and culturally aware everyday support.

Built for municipalities, NGOs, universities, employers, and community institutions. An early intervention tool for integration that is more personal, more scalable, and more behavior-oriented than information portals alone.

Become a Pilot Partner Try the Prototype →

An early prototype exploring a new category of integration support in Poland.

The Challenge

The challenge is not arrival. It is belonging.

Poland has already become home to a large and growing population of foreign workers and residents. By the end of 2024, almost 1.2 million foreigners were registered with ZUS, while official statistics recorded just over 1.06 million foreigners working in Poland, accounting for roughly 6.8–6.9% of the workforce.

Many newcomers are economically active and physically present, yet social integration often remains incomplete. People can work, study, and navigate daily life in Poland while still feeling hesitant in public interaction, disconnected from local communities, or unsure how to take the next step toward participation.

Institutions already provide legal guidance, emergency support, and access to services. What is still often missing is a trusted, everyday layer of support that helps people build confidence, routines, and real-world connection over time.

~1.2M

Foreigners registered with ZUS

By the end of 2024, nearly 1.2 million foreign nationals were in Poland's social insurance system.

stat.gov.pl, 2024

1.06M

Foreigners working in Poland

Representing approximately 6.8–6.9% of the total workforce — a structurally significant share.

GUS, November 2024

↓

Fragmented integration support

No comprehensive national integration policy. Most support is carried by local institutions and NGOs, creating gaps in continuity and scale.

WHOLE-COMM, OECD

Why Now

Integration capacity matters for Poland.

Poland is facing long-term demographic pressure, with international and OECD-linked reporting pointing to a major future decline in the working-age population and a rapid rise in the old-age dependency burden. At the same time, migration to Poland is becoming more structurally important — not only economically but socially and locally.

Yet integration support is still fragmented. Research on migrant integration in Poland points to the absence of a comprehensive national integration policy, with much of the actual integration work being carried by local institutions and NGOs. That creates a clear opportunity for tools that complement existing services and make integration support more continuous, personal, and scalable.

2024

Current population structure

75+

2.6M

65–74

3.5M

50–64

6.5M

25–49

11.8M

15–24

3.8M

0–14

5.5M

Working-age (15–64)

2050

Projected structure (GUS / Eurostat)

75+

4.8M

65–74

4.1M

50–64

3.8M

25–49

6.9M

15–24

2.6M

0–14

3.3M

Post-working (65+)

Shrinking working-age

−0M

Working-age population by 2050

+0%

Growth in foreign workers since 2015

National integration policy frameworks

Sources: GUS (stat.gov.pl), Eurostat, OECD International Migration Outlook

The Product

Not just an information portal. An integration companion.

Instead of only explaining how systems work, Mostek helps users take action. It turns integration into a sequence of small, realistic steps: preparing for a real conversation, discovering a local activity, practicing a low-pressure social interaction, or building confidence around everyday situations.

The goal is not only access to information, but movement from passive presence to active participation. Mostek is designed to support that movement through conversational guidance, contextual prompts, and reflection over time.

🎯

Guided Real-World Action

Manageable steps adapted to the user's situation — from trying a short interaction in Polish to attending a local event. Each action is realistic rather than overwhelming.

💬

Contextual Language Support

Not generic language learning. Mostek helps users prepare for real situations with relevant phrases, tone, and situational confidence for the next real moment in everyday life.

🤝

Reflection and Adaptation

After each action, the user can reflect briefly on what happened. Mostek then adjusts future suggestions, helping build confidence and continuity over time.

How It Works

From presence to participation, step by step

Personal onboarding

A warm, conversational onboarding flow helps the user share their context, interests, language confidence, comfort zones, and goals. The aim is to understand the person behind the need, not just collect profile data.

Small real-world steps

Mostek suggests manageable actions adapted to the user's situation. These may include trying a short interaction in Polish, attending a local event, or engaging with a nearby opportunity that feels realistic rather than overwhelming.

Contextual language support

The product helps users prepare for real situations with relevant phrases, tone, and situational confidence. This is not generic language learning; it is support for the next real moment in everyday life.

Reflection and adaptation

After each action, the user can reflect briefly on what happened. Mostek then adjusts future suggestions, helping build confidence and continuity over time.

Approach

Culturally aware by design

Integration is not one-size-fits-all. People arrive with different histories, expectations of institutions, communication patterns, and levels of trust. Mostek is designed to account for those differences in a respectful and practical way, without reducing people to stereotypes.

The current concept is especially relevant to newcomers from neighboring Eastern European countries, where cultural proximity can ease some parts of adaptation while still leaving major barriers in confidence, belonging, and local participation.

Why This Approach

Most tools inform. Mostek helps people move.

Legal aid platforms, information portals, and translation tools are necessary, but they do not fully address the behavioral and emotional layer of integration. Many of the hardest barriers are not purely informational: they involve hesitation, uncertainty, social distance, and the difficulty of building habits in a new environment.

Mostek focuses on that missing layer. It is designed to help users take repeated, realistic action in the real world — and to help institutions support integration not only as access, but as participation.

Pilot

We are looking for pilot partners in Poland

Mostek is currently an early prototype and concept-stage product. We are looking for pilot partners who work directly with newcomers and want to explore a more human, scalable approach to integration support.

🏛

Municipal institutions

🤝

NGOs and foundations

🎓

Universities

💼

Employers with international staff

🌎

Community and intercultural organizations

A pilot could include:

Co-design around a real user context

Testing with a defined participant group

Qualitative insight gathering

Early outcome framing for future product development

Vision

A new category of integration infrastructure

Mostek is being developed as a digital companion for integration: a product that lives between formal services and everyday life. It is designed for mobile use, low-friction engagement, and repeated interaction over time.

The current form is a mobile-first web application. Over time, it could evolve into a native mobile product and selected messaging-based experiences where that improves accessibility and adoption.

Presented at the prototype stage, Mostek is also a proposal for how Poland could think differently about integration support: not only as information delivery, but as trust-building, confidence-building, and guided participation.

📱 Mobile-First PWA 🔒 GDPR Compliant 🧠 AI-Powered Guidance 🇵🇱 Built for Poland

About the Founder

Built from lived experience

Denis Salnikov

Founder · Kraków, Poland

Mostek is founded by Denis Salnikov, a resident of Kraków with Ukrainian and Russian roots. Before moving to Poland in 2022, he spent four years as an expat in Cyprus and Germany.

The project emerged from the direct experience of how integration is lived in practice — through language, belonging, hesitation, adaptation, and everyday attempts to find one's place. Denis brings to it over a decade of product development experience across fintech, SaaS, and mobility — with companies including N26, PandaDoc, Backbase and others operating at European and global scale.

What began as a personal conviction took clearer shape through the Leadership School of the Freedom Institute — one of Poland's leading civic think-tanks with a focus on building leadership and real-world impact. This is not only a policy idea. It is a product concept grounded in the human reality of crossing cultures and trying to belong.

🎓 SPIW Leadership XI 📍 Kraków 🌎 Ukrainian & Russian roots 💻 N26 · PandaDoc · Backbase 🌍 Cyprus · Germany · Poland

Let's build better integration tools for Poland

Mostek is looking for pilot partners, institutional collaborators, and innovation-focused organizations interested in testing a more human and scalable model of integration support.

Become a Pilot Partner

denis@agileexpat.com

Concept submission for Orzeł Innowacji 2026