In a context of high youth unemployment rates and depopulation in rural areas, entrepreneurship becomes a key element to build an adversity-safe future of Europe and a tool to find alternative ways to deal with labour market challenges. Building local ecosystems focused on promoting and enabling youth entrepreneurship with a glocal perspective can help in tackling these challenges, with teachers and youth workers as key enablers to promote innovative entrepreneurial models in a lifelong learning context. Led by Vestland County Coucil, YESpecialist gathers experts from six European regions in Spain, Italy, Croatia, Denmark and Norway, plus a European network of regional & local authorities for lifelong learning, to create a new innovative methodology that will build up local ecosystems, introducing non formal and informal methods into formal education and to promote innovative entrepreneurship concepts. The project will specially focus on rural areas and will be inclusive regarding young people from vulnerable groups. Cooperation between all actors (authorities, business, NGOs, and schools), with an emphasis on VET teachers and youth workers is key to achieve the project results. Key outputs of the project will be a repository of active youth involvement in local ecosystems at European level, guidelines for building up regional/local ecosystems to promote youth entrepreneurship in rural areas, and a training course for stakeholders aiming at building such ecosystems. The latter will be implemented in two international pilot training courses that will build capacity in rural local contexts while promoting their interconnection at regional, national and European level.
YESpecialist's goal: to gather experts from six European regions in Italy, Croatia, Denmark, Spain and Norway, plus a European network of regional & local authorities for lifelong learning (EARLALL in Brussels), to build up local ecosystems to boost youth entrepreneurship in rural areas, introducing non-formal and informal methods into formal EntreComp (entrepreneurial competences) education and to promote innovative entrepreneurship ideas and concepts. The project's focus was on rural areas and vulnerable young people. Methodology: developing local activities trough cooperation between all four categories of local stakeholders (public authorities, business sector, NGOs and schools), together with young people (bottom-up approach). The three key outputs of the project are: IO1: a repository with good examples of youth entrepreneurship in rural areas at European level, https://yespecialists.eu/yes-in-europe/ , IO2: a youth entrepreneurship toolkit for teachers and trainers https://yespecialists.eu/capacity-building/ and IO3: Guidelines for building up regional/local ecosystems to promote youth entrepreneurship in rural areas: https://yespecialists.eu/yes-ecosystems/. In addition we developed Policy Recommendations.
The partner regions identified the following common challenges and needs: -Young people leaving rural areas, because of youth unemployment and/or lack of motivation and activities - Many young people want to stay in the rural areas but don't see sustainable options for a good life there “Local communities are the ones that are directly affected by the consequences of brain drain", states the EU CoR in its opinion on brain drain (Feb 2020). The opinion suggests "that Local and Regional Authorities set up local alliances, including all stakeholders, which are able to draft and implement local policies that help to mitigate brain drain." The aim of the YESpecialists project is to strengthen youth entrepreneurship in rural areas by building strong regional/local ecosystems that focus on involving young people in the community, help them find their role within it, strengthen their entrepreneurial competences (EntreComp) and empower them to take an active role in identifying and covering local needs and theirs.