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Moving Mountains - Unlocking the Potential of Disadvantaged Communities

2023-3-AT01-KA152-YOU-0001778482023Mobility of young peoplefinalized
Countries: AT|PL|BE|IT|TR|EL · Grant: €36,596
Development of disadvantaged rural and urban areasEntrepreneurial learning - entrepreneurship educationTackling geographical remoteness and involving rural areas

Objectives

'Moving Mountains' has been designed as a Youth Exchange Project aimed at bringing together 36 young people, aged 18 to 30, stemming from 6 different EU and Candidate Countries with the intention of instilling them with fundamental entrepreneurial competences meant to counter the phenomena of Population Desertification and Brain Drain within remote communities inside their home countries. By exploring competitive advantages located in their communities, objectively analyzing economical situations of their region, and offering the necessary tools/knowledge in order to develop business plans meant to attract revenue as well as increase job market offers in their areas, our 36 participants would develop a set of attitudes and behaviours which would lead to the development of rural business environments. Furthermore, 'Moving Mountains' placed heavy emphasis of combining theoretical knowledge over entrepreneurship/business development, with practical solutions in order to maximize the impact of our project's results. Thus, young people benefitted of receiving the skeleton of a 20 page business plan which has been approved for non-reimbursable EU Start-Up financing of the main facilitator, have extensively research how to attract investment for their ideas by making use of EU backed opportunities, as well as having created their EUROPASS CV's in order to increase their level of employability. In order to reach a maximum level of benefit for young people involved, our project was structured in a crescendo timeline, with each day building up on their knowledge and skills, laying the ground work of participants developing their CV's, learning basics about economy and business, and putting their business ideas on paper by having completed the 20 page Business Plan template on a step-by-step manner, resulting in them having completed all necessary documents in order to be eligible to enter Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, thus soft-starting the continuation of their entrepreneurial path, further encouraging them to pursue life-long learning in their area of interest by job-shadowing entrepreneurs across Europe which are active in the fields they would be interest in creating their own businesses. Our project has been designed with the purpose of contributing to the EU Youth Strategy for 2019-2027, which stipulates the need to reduce the number of NEETS individuals below the threshold of 9%, which is why we have attracted a high number of individuals which fall under these categories, and have focused both our implementation and dissemination campaigns on rural or disadvantaged urban communities, given that statistically these are the areas which contribute the most to youth unemployment due to lack of economic opportunities. In this sense, we encouraged young people directly to bring a change to their environments, by pursuing their passions in an entrepreneurial manner, and create new job opportunities in the form of Start-Ups, both for themselves, as well as their peers living in their area. Further consolidating on participants' personal and professional development, our project has made full use of the Youthpass Certificate and the elaboration of their 8 Key Competences throughout the 9 day programme. Already from the first day participants have been familiarized with these tools as a method of quantifying their soft skills, having analyzed in daily Evaluation Sessions how they have been engaged with each of the 8 skills, culminating in the receival of their Youthpasses, which are meant to serve as an advantage in their CV's and further professional lives, proving they are familiar with working in diverse, multicultural environments whilst also having gained experience within the topics of Entrepreneurship and Business Development. High priority has been given towards distributing beneficiaries' gained knowledge and skills within their local communities by addressing the youth demographic which is most at risk to fall under the NEETS category, with our goal being to share with them not only viable options meant to encourage them in developing entrepreneurial projects, but also exposing them to various EU backed programmes meant to engage them in joining lifelong learning opportunities, thus being presented with the tools participants discovered during our programme, such as Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, Key Action Projects, as well as youth work in general. In order to achieve this objective, participants have gone to various schools/universities in their area, holding presentations they have personally created and talking about the experiences/knowledge gained during their participation in "Moving Mountains". Thus, making use of word-of-mouth distribution, and starting a ripple-effect, we were able to successfully promote various tools meant to benefit young people's professional development either through continuing their education, or developing entrepreneurial approaches in their regions.

Project partners (6)