“The added value of Social Entrepreneurship in Youth Work” is a 24 months Strategic Partnership – transfer of good practice - under the KA2 of the Erasmus Plus Programme. The Project aims to create a framework where youth workers can benefit of the experience of successful initiatives of Social Entrepreneurship developed by youth organizations. Thanks to this good experience sharing, the youth workers are going to acquire new methods that will allow them to transfer tools and methodology to stimulate and develop the youth initiative. The consortium is made of 6 partners including the coordinator – TDM 2000 (Italy). The partners represent: - Luxembourg - Art square Luxembourg asbl - France - Coopérative CO-ACTIONS - Bulgaria - Law and Internet Foundations –LIF - Estonia - Estonian Social Enterprise Network - Greece – Institute for Entrepreneurship and Development – IED Basically all partners met during different events organized by an association of Erasmus Plus National Agencies in the frame of the Towards Collaborative Practice forum on social innovation and entrepreneurship, which started in Malmo – Sweden in 2015. The experience of the TCP Forums, made the partnership strong and solid with an idea for cooperation that became real with this proposal. During the TCP Forums, we have met organizations and experts from all over Europe; we have realized how big is the potential that the world of social entrepreneurship has to support the improvement of youth work and vice versa. At the same time we have noticed how still confused is the understanding of “Social Entrepreneurship”, third sector and even of youth work. Listening, observing and reflecting we realized that Social entrepreneurship has become a form of self-employment for many, allowing people to be self-sufficient while making a difference in society at the same time. We understood that in that world we can find answers that the youth sector is searching to continue empowering youth. Our goal is to inform youth workers about the concept, methods, and values of social entrepreneurship that are suitable to the youth sector, as well as provide youth workers with real model examples of young social entrepreneurs in action. Our primary target group are youth workers. We are going to involve directly 200 of them. Indirectly we foresee an involvement of other 300 of them through sharing of information and learning acquired during the short-term joint staff activities, and 700 additional representatives of other stakeholders. Our ultimate target are all youth (especially those with fewer opportunities), that after the project, thanks to proper guidance, mentorship, and preparation on behalf of youth NGOs and youth workers will be stimulated to take action to improve themselves and the society in which they live. The specific objectives of the project are: - to give opportunity to youth workers to acquire appropriate knowledge on social entrepreneurship - to compare the different perceptions of the meaning of social entrepreneurship in Europe and especially in the countries partners of the project referring also to the different legislations in force - to share good practices of social entrepreneurship methodologies that could be taken as examples and replicated - to foster the invention of youth initiatives/to stimulate youth initiative among our local youth In order to reach these objectives we have prepared an activity plan that foresees: - 4 Transnational Partners Meetings (1 Kick off meeting, 1 between the first mobility and the first group of , - 2 short staff mobility events - 6 short staff mobility visits - at least 8 visibility dissemination events per partner During these activities the partners will have the opportunity to meet, compare, plan, monitor, share responsibilities, and re-arrange the plans in order to efficiently reach the set results. The participants will have the opportunity to better comprehend the meaning of social entrepreneurship, how it is understood and applied in the countries involved in the project and will work to create a document that contains all this information and that can be the example to enlarge the research to the rest of Europe. Through the activities they will also be able to observe in person how the models work and finally they will work together to elaborate ideas on how to harvest the results of the good practices in terms of social entrepreneurship development and transform them in tools to encourage youth initiatives. In addition, we will also work on an online virtual working space that will work as a back office for the entire project. Here we will share and discuss also the outputs of the C meetings and their completion. In the case of the short visits, the virtual working space will include one “discussion room” per model.
“The added value of Social Entrepreneurship in Youth Work” has been a Strategic Partnership lasting 33 months to share and transfer good practices, financed under the KA2 of the Erasmus Plus Programme in its Youth Section. The Project aimed to create a framework where youth workers could get in touch with successful initiatives of Social Entrepreneurship and vice versa, learning new lessons from both worlds and comparing and sharing ideas and methods. Thanks to this experience sharing, youth workers and organizations involved had the chance to acquire new methods and tools to be transferred in other contexts and places, in order to stimulate and develop youth initiative in innovative ways. The consortium was made of 6 partners including the coordinator: - TDM 2000 (Italy) - Art square Luxembourg asbl (Luxembourg) - Coopérative CO-ACTIONS (France) - Law and Internet Foundations – LIF (Bulgaria) - Estonian Social Enterprise Network (Estonia) - Institute for Entrepreneurship and Development – IED (Greece). The partnership was built during different events organized by Erasmus Plus National Agencies in the frame of the "Towards Collaborative Practice" forum on social innovation and entrepreneurship, which started in Malmo – Sweden in 2015. During the experience of the TCP Forums, partners had realized how big is the potential that the world of social entrepreneurship has to support the improvement of youth work and vice versa. At the same time it was noticed how the understanding of “Social Entrepreneurship”, third sector and youth work is very diverse and difficult to uniform to a common way of thinking, leading to confusion and opening up the need for a thorough observation and sharing on how different systems and ideas about these topics are seen in different EU countries. The project started therefore from the idea that there was a need to better define these concepts in different contexts, understanding their common and different elements, comparing objectives, ideas and existing policies and laws, and seeing what answers for youth empowerment and employability, as well as responses to common social issues, could be given by social entrepreneurship and youth work in cooperation. Moreover, we worked within the partnership to provide youth workers with concepts, methods, and values of social entrepreneurship that could be suitable to the youth sector, providing them real model examples of young social entrepreneurs in action, and vice versa. Main targets of our actions have been youth workers, young social entrepreneurs and youth leaders. The project involved around 100 through mobility activities and partners meetings, and around 600 more through dissemination actions and other activities. Many more were reached through local actions, involvement of different organizations and enterprises within the visits we held, online platform we developed, and sharing of news and publications. The ultimate goal was to develop proper ideas for guidance, mentorship, and preparation for young people through the empowerment of youth NGOs, youth workers, social enterprises and organizations involved, stimulating the involved stakeholders to take action to improve themselves and the society in which they live. The specific objectives of the project have been: - To give opportunity to youth workers to acquire appropriate knowledge on social entrepreneurship - To compare the different perceptions of the meaning of social entrepreneurship in Europe and especially in the countries partners of the project referring also to the different legislations in force - To share good practices of social entrepreneurship methodologies that could be taken as examples and replicated - To foster innovative youth initiatives generated through social entrepreneurship methods In order to reach these objectives we have ran a number of activities, with all difficulties encountered in holding face to face actions throughout the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021: - 3 Transnational Partners Meetings (1 Kick off, 1 partners meeting, 1 final evaluation. One meeting was canceled and held online due to pandemic outbreak and many more smaller ones were also held online). - 2 short staff mobility events (6 days each) - 6 short staff mobility visits (3 days each) - 36 dissemination events plus a larger online dissemination event The project has also seen the production of a so called "Inspiration Paper on Social Entrepreneurship and Youth Work", realized in English and translated in 7 additional languages, and the creation of a platform for sharing of social entrepreneurship good practices (http://socialentrepreneurship-youth.eu) and a discussion platform to discuss about relevant connected issues (https://www.facebook.com/groups/229049995779807).