Get to know our newest project: Promotion of social entrepreneurship in the youth sector by digital and informal education tools (InDigiSE)

Project leader: KLAIPEDOS UNIVERSITETAS Lithuania

Partners:

  1. Association of Polish Communes Euroregion Baltic
  2. Kristiansand katedralskole Gimle Norway
  3. Baltic Institute for Regional Affairs, Poland
  4. SOCIALAS INOVACIJAS CENTRS Latvia

Project duration: 1.04.2020 – 31.03.2022

EUROPE 2020 states that growth has to be delivered through a strong emphasis on job creation and poverty reduction. Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a precisely new method to be used to overcome existing challenges as the primary aim of social entrepreneurship is to bring – positive impact in the youth sector. In the “Social economy and social entrepreneurship”‘

Social Europe Guide Volume 4 ( 2013) it is said that several key challenges of the Social economy (build be SE) are found, and those are: lack of visibility; lack of specialized training; lack of support network and infrastructure; access to finance.

NGOs working together in Interreg BSR Seed Money Facility project “BSR youth social entrepreneurship development BYSED” developed the idea to have a better educational and overall support for youth SE in Baltic Sea Region (BSR) states for the social business youth sector in line with the EU Strategy for the BSR objectives.

Specific OBJECTIVES:

– Delivery of youth-oriented, innovative educational tools to develop the entrepreneurial competence in the field of social economy and engage youth within social entrepreneurship;

– To spread the idea of social entrepreneurship in the Nothern European Region (LT,LV, PL, NO) within the youth sector;

– Provide the necessary competencies, and support tools enable young people to develop social business ideas;

–  promoting the concept of SE and supporting BSR social enterprise start-ups by maintaining an Open Education Resource platform socialenterprisebsr.net

– Encourage young people in innovative and creative thinking, collaborate and take the risk via InnoCamps;

– provide InnoCamp Methodology Handbook – step-by-step replicable and transferable tool for youth, schools, NGOs, educators etc.;

– To promote good practices among local and international partners to achieve sustainable, collaborative, social business support within the youth sector.

TARGET GROUP:

The project intends to work mainly with the youth target group (16-25 years) to maximise the effect, ensuring that a sophisticated approach towards SE stimulation in the Northern Europe region is efficient. We precisely aim at local youth from secondary schools and universities and youth active in the Youth Boards. Youth centres and NGO’s are the secondary target group. The public sector will be involved to get in policy formation sense.

ACTIVITIES:

ACTIVITY 1: “Promotion of youth social entrepreneurship by digital tools”.The gained results of the project will be presented and distributed throughout Northern Europe, to point out the most efficient SE support in the youth sector. The continuation and development of the digital environment and tools to support and promote social entrepreneurship in the youth sector

within the Nothern Europe region countries including platform www.socialenterprisebsr.net which will continue to function as an OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCE and networking tool to strengthen cooperation in between SE start-ups and foster up BSR cross-border SE ideas, but from now on also with youth related orientation and impact.

ACTIVITY 2: Guidelines for youth centres and youth organizations “How to stimulate social entrepreneurship via informal learning methods including gamification methods”.

ACTIVITY 3: InnoCamp Methodology Handbook followed by two InnoCamps in Norway and Lithuania;

ACTIVITY 4: 4 Forums organised in PL, LT, NO and LV, gaining participants from the youth sector to promote the guidelines, InnoCamp Methodology handbook and OER platform.

RESULTS:

– training on informal ICT tool to improve the level of entrepreneurial skills for youth, to foster the entrepreneurial attitudes and transversal skills of individuals interested in setting up a social economy enterprise or youth running a social-economy company in the BSR;

– Supplying the existing and prospective social entrepreneurs from Baltic Sea Region countries with a training programme, training material and guidelines focused on the development of entrepreneur’s competencies to start, run and further develop their social-economy enterprise

BENEFITS.

We foresee that at Northern Europe region benefits will be:

– Improvement of SE support and promotion of notion in the youth sector;

– Development of networking facilities to allow more efficient co-operation between organisations involved in work with SE;

– pilots and new cross-border partnerships growing in the region and informing more extensive practice;

–  better supported methods of SE from youth centres and youth NGOs, after proper use of guidelines created on informal learning methods of SE incl. appropriate use of guidelines

established on friendly learning methods and ICT tools;

– a transferable and replicable step-by-step guide for schools, HEIs and NGOs on how to organise InnoCamps on Youth SE in all EU countries;

– increased recognition from decision-makers of the value of young social entrepreneurs in a co-creating active and healthy community.

Kick-off meeting: 15-16.04.2020, Klaipeda.

The content of this website is the sole responsibility of the author and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union, the Managing Authority or the Joint Secretariat of the South Baltic Cross-border Cooperation Programme 2014-2020. The project UMBRELLA is partly financed from the Interreg South Baltic Programme 2014-2020 through the European Regional Development Fund.