CoopStarter 2.0 is embedded in a context characterized by two main societal challenges met by younger generations: mass unemployment, and aspiration to conduct a professional project which “makes sense”. It proposes to do so by stimulating and supporting cooperative entrepreneurship among young Europeans. This initiative stems from a former European project, CoopStarter, which resulted in the creation of a European network of cooperative mentors (CoopMentors), coordinating their respective activities around a common methodology. Cooperative associations (i.e. national umbrella organizations representing cooperative businesses) have developed numerous tools and an in-depth expertise to support cooperative entrepreneurs. However, they are yet to have created specific tools and methods to mobilize younger generations around cooperative entrepreneurship. On the other hand, youth organizations benefit from large networks of young people, actively testing, implementing and developing VET methods to actively involve young people around structured projects tackling collective needs, in a democratic way. However, they are still yet to have developed systematic approaches to actively promote and support entrepreneurship among their members. The objectives of CoopStarter 2.0 are the following: Main objective: Establish a VET Strategic Partnership between cooperatives and youth organizations, aimed at developing a cooperative entrepreneurial culture among young people and youth workers in the EU. Specific objectives: - enabling young leaders to transpose their skills, experiences and approaches into a cooperative entrepreneurial action; - improving the capacity of CoopMentors to reach young people, and youth workers to support cooperative entrepreneurial initiatives; - creating sustainable cross-sectoral and transnational workflows between cooperative associations, youth organisations and training centers; - enabling EU-wide cooperative and youth networks to implement a large-scale dynamic for youth cooperative entrepreneurship at EU level. This pilot project will directly involve a total of 23 participants from 5 EU countries, including: - 10 young ambassadors, i.e. volunteers in youth organizations or informal groups of young people, and willing to set up a cooperative-related project; - 10 mentors, among whom 6 CoopMentors and 4 youth workers, willing to develop VET partnership aimed at promoting and supporting youth cooperative entrepreneurship; - 1 cooperative trainer; - 2 representatives of EU-wide networks (one network of cooperatives, one network of youth organizations). This project will reach these objectives through three main activities: a. Creating an online Knowledge Base providing VET training and learning material, enabling mentors throughout Europe to stimulate and support the creation of cooperative start-ups by young leaders; b. Implementing a pilot programme of young cooperative ambassadors, testing and exploiting these project results among a panel of young leaders; c. Capitalizing on this cross-sectoral cooperation to draw a European panorama on youth cooperative entrepreneurship, used by a EU-wide platform to develop coordinated awareness-raising actions among policy-makers and other stakeholders. The methodology implemented will aim to make this project a learning experience, for all participants. All intellectual outputs and activities will co-involve youth organizations and cooperative associations, in an ambition to establish a EU community of mentors sharing common ideas, practices, experiences, tools and objectives. The project implementation will be conducted in four periods: a. “Prepare”, aiming to share practices, experiences and tools among mentors, and reach a common long-term vision about this Strategic Partnership; b. “Design” of intellectual outputs, co-produced by mentors at EU level and adapted to their respective local specificities; c. “Test” intellectual outputs in the field, through 3 multiplier events conducted by young ambassadors aiming to (i) mobilize their local communities, (ii) stimulate the emergence of business ideas in a hackathon, and (iii) develop a cooperative business project; d. “Improve and exploit” intellectual outputs, to create a sound basis upon which our Strategic partnership will be sustained. Three main results are expected: 1. Mentoring and training organisations will be enabled to improve the quality and efficiency of VET in the field of cooperative entrepreneurship; 2. Young leaders will be enabled to conduct entrepreneurial projects promoting equity, social cohesion and active citizenship among their peers; 3. EU-wide networks will have established a cross-sectoral strategic partnership contributing to make lifelong learning and mobility a reality.
Coopstarter2.0 was designed to support cooperative entrepreneurship among young Europeans. Project partners developed a mentorship methodology to help young people implement their entrepreneurial idea while learning how to mobilise a community becoming ambassadors of the cooperative model. This initiative stems from a former European project (Grundtvig - LLP Programme), CoopStarter, which resulted in the publication of a guidebook and the creation of a European network of cooperative mentors (CoopMentors), coordinating their respective activities around a common methodology. To improve the reach of CoopMentors towards young people Coopstarter2.0 project involved youth organisations and a training center. This collaboration also enabled youth workers to learn about cooperative entrepreneurship providing them with new skills and knowledge to be employed in their activities. The project mentors trained 10 young ambassadors from 5 pilot countries in 2 international mobilities with materials developed by all partners in a variety of formats. All the productions of the project are freely available to anyone interested in replicating or improving the methodology and can be downloaded from the project website at http://starter.coop. The ambassadors engaged over 300 participants in events (live and online) designed to test the intellectual outputs while developing a cooperative entrepreneurial idea. 2 cooperatives are in the making thanks to these activities. At European level the strategic partnership has lead to stable collaboration between EU-wide networks active in the fields of youth and cooperative enterprises. It also strengthened and intensified this collaboration at national level in the participant countries. The methodology have already been upscaled on a global level and picked up for programs in other countries outside the original consortium of partners such as Switzerland, Colombia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sweden, USA and Poland. Coopstarter2.0 has also inspired the development of Coopedia, an open source Knowledge Base designed to share resources on cooperative entrepreneurship for the youth in a distributed network over the internet.