Through the implementation of the Digital Hoop project, we wanted to: 1) Assess social entrepreneurship skills and practices in order to promote them among young people with fewer opportunities. 2) Improve the skills of youth workers. Organise entrepreneurial skills training for young people. 3) Create an interactive platform to support young people with fewer opportunities. 4) Launch a Mentorship Programme to motivate disadvantaged young people to start a business.
Our project was implemented to promote youth social entrepreneurship, with the aim of meeting both the needs of the organisations involved in the partnership (strengthening economic and social cohesion; promoting employment) and, above all, the needs of the target group (the need for disadvantaged young people to have a stable income). As Eurostat statistics show, it is more difficult for young people with fewer opportunities to have a stable income due to difficulties in finding employment or becoming entrepreneurs (due to a gap in experience and knowledge). Thus, Digital Hoop has addressed young people's access to entrepreneurship with the aim of reducing high financial instability among young people with fewer opportunities by using training, mentoring and online support tools to become entrepreneurs. In addition, the consortium has chosen a social entrepreneurship approach, as there are a total of 2 million such enterprises (i.e. 10% of all enterprises in Europe) employing over 11 million paid employees, with the aim of increasing the number of social enterprises by encouraging young people to become social entrepreneurs.