“Social entrepreneurship for rural areas“ was a 2 stage Erasmus+ project, with the main aim to create opportunities for rural youth and active members of society to expand their knowledge about business opportunities in rural areas through exploring the concept of social entrepreneurship as an innovative way to solve social problems using entrepreneurial skills. The project followed the logical frame - starting with providing the skills to identify the business opportunities that exist in rural areas, introducing them to the topic of social entrepreneurship, and then continuing with giving tools for developing their own business ideas, aiming at developing their communities and becoming entrepreneurs working towards social good. We wanted to contribute to the process of reducing youth unemployment, developing rural areas, and increasing social and economic cohesion. Many of the rural areas of European and EECA countries face a common challenge, as their capacity to create high-quality, sustainable jobs has fallen behind that of urban areas. Generally, incomes are lower in rural regions than in towns or cities and there are fewer job opportunities. Marginalized youth living in rural areas have a problem getting good jobs and continuing education to get ahead in life and contribute to society. One of the obvious solutions for them is to move to the city and try to get a job there. However, rural areas have their strengths and opportunities and these marginalized youth possess one asset, which isn’t being explored by anyone to its fullest potential – their familiarity with the rural area that they live in. Starting a business in rural areas would be a great vehicle for capitalizing on this asset that they already have. In general, rural areas account for only 15.3% of GDP on average in the EU, which is not too much when we think about the numbers of people living outside of the cities. Therefore SE can become a key factor in providing employment and developing entrepreneurial initiatives leading to sustainable rural development. We believe that SE is a paradigm that can be seen as one of the solutions to reduce poverty, migration, depopulation, and retention of the working population in rural areas. “Social entrepreneurship for rural areas'' was a follow-up of the Erasmus+ project about social entrepreneurship “Be Enterprising – Be Bold“.The project was implemented in 2018 by Genesis and ICPI, in collaboration with other promoters. The project had such a big success among the participants, that we decided to adapt it to a specific context of rural areas, which we strongly believed, benefited from adopting this concept. Therefore, we upgraded the project, adapted it to the needs of the youth in rural areas, and built a new partnership in the frame of this project. The project has been divided into 2 different stages, plus a mid-term task. The objectives of our project were: - to develop youth in rural communities and increase the capacity of young leaders living in rural areas to become active multipliers of community engagement; - to raise awareness of participants about the potential of rural areas and existing assets; - to inspire them and provide them with the skills on how to identify the business opportunities that exist in rural areas, develop the idea and start new businesses; - to inform about the benefits that rural entrepreneurship can produce in their communities; - to make young people stay in rural areas and prevent brain drain; - to allow the participants to get to know each other and learn from each other’s realities and projects, and set up projects together for the future, to create more opportunities in the countryside across Europe; - to get rural young people interested in international youth activities and Erasmus+ projects through sharing information about these opportunities (In many cases, there is a lack of social activities in the countryside – especially for young people. There are not many initiatives – and if any, they are on a local level).