From idea to enterprise

The first activity (a training course in the UK) will take place between 25.10.2015-01.11.2015. The second activity (a practise project at home) will take place between November 15 and January 16 The third activity (a 2nd training course in the UK) will take place most probably first half of January 2016 but date is not fixed yet. The changes in the world economy and technologies together with globalization and society development strongly influence on a labor market. There is no anymore “job for life”, the industrial and physical work is becoming less needed giving the way to creativity-focused professions and due to high competition in business sector and economic problems employers are looking for already educated, experienced, flexible and creative employees. In turn it influences on the youth unemployment. At this stage entrepreneurship and in particular social entrepreneurship can become an effective way to confront the problem. It is how young people can get needed experience, become responsible and create their own jobs. NGOs can help young people to develop employability skills and involve them into entrepreneurship. At the same time NGOs also can benefit a lot from learning social entrepreneurship as they also face with the different problems and cannot be sustainable. But there are not many NGOs which are competitive enough in the issue. The training course “From idea to enterprise” aims to develop youth workers skills on creativity and social entrepreneurship in order to make NGOs sustainable and involve young people in the process of overcoming the youth unemployment through social entrepreneurship. The project will get together 24 youth workers and young people from 11 Program and Neighboring countries. Some of the participants already are familiar with the project topic, for others it will be new. The objectives of the training course are: 1) To develop entrepreneurial skills of youth workers. 2) To provide youth workers with information on how to develop, validate and implement social entrepreneurial projects and enterprises. 3) To explore practical ways of supporting NGOs set up social enterprises, taking into consideration legal, financial, management and social requirements. 4) To equip youth workers with tools and methods on development entrepreneurial skills among young people. 5) To develop new methods and tools on the topic of social entrepreneurship. 6) To provide participants with the opportunity to exchange experience and expertise in the field of social entrepreneurship. 7) To provide youth workers with information about opportunities of the Erasmus+ Programme and to support establishment of new partnerships, especially with Eastern Partnership countries. 8) To develop solidarity, promote tolerance and foster mutual understanding between people with different backgrounds through initiating intercultural dialogue between them and common transnational projects. The type of the activity is a training course, what will be based on using the non-formal education methods and specific methods and tools on the project topic. The project will consist from 3 activities. The first activity (a training course in the UK between 25.10.2015-01.11.2015) will be concentrated on understanding of issue entrepreneurship (in particular social entrepreneurship), creation and development of social enterprises’ ideas, funding opportunities, some of the employability and entrepreneurial skills (innovation and creativity, critical thinking skills, soft skills) and financial management. In the beginning of the training course the participants will be divided in small groups of 3 persons in each. They will work on creating of social enterprises: from the idea to the first steps of running the social business. During the activities people in the groups will change depending on the tasks. The second activity will take place at the participants’ home countries. At home the partners will work under the trainers’ mentoring on improving their ideas, analyse of the markets needs and sectors, potential difficulties, list of means for opening the enterprise and plan for the first year. The third activity will take place in January 2016 in the UK and the same participants will meet and continue their work on their social enterprises. This activity will cover such important elements for the running social enterprises as PR, marketing, strategic planning and other employability and entrepreneurial skills (management skills, interpersonal skills, IT skills, sales/marketing skills, client management skills). By the end the participants will have developed strategic plan with costing and calculated risks and will be equipped with all instruments to open their own social enterprises. The main results of the project will be sustainable development of NGOs, including turn them into social enterprises or running social enterprises on their based, activities for young people on the topic of social entrepreneurship implemented by project participants in their countries and social enterprises created by young people after these activities. Promoting social entrepreneurship among the local partners’ NGO in order to help them to become sustainable as well as involvement of bigger number of young people in to NGO and social entrepreneurship issue will be longer term benefits.