Lack of active citizenship, fragile democracies, outdated educational systems, religious agendas and high youth unemployment rates are some of the main concerns in MENA region. Young people are left on the margins of the job market, often lacking the employability skills, facing gaps in terms of usage of innovation and technology and not rarely being part of political and religious agendas. Although the social entrepreneurship (SE) has become a “mantra” for solving these issues in the MENA region after the Arab Spring, simple analyses of the local realities show lack of social entrepreneurship infrastructure as well as lack of sustainability of the social businesses.The lack of sustainability, does not only refer to the lack of resources for sustaining the business, but also to the format in which the SE is being practiced and how it is positioned in the socio-economic system. We believe that using innovation and digital learning are the main assets to maximize the potentials of SE and to provide tools that can contribute to its sustainability.Social innovation as such should not be only perceived from the perspective of newly born startups, but should be seen as an opportunity for further growth and development of already successfully operating businesses, even more for capacity-building of impact-making CSOs operating in the regions. In addition, the digital learning serves to provide exploitation of the social innovation through usage of newest technologies and to guarantee its durability and expansion over time. Therefore, through SOciaL Innovation and Digital learning Platform (SOLID project) we would like to empower youngsters and youth organizations to exploit innovation and technologies for social impact, thereby, making their mission durable and sustainable. SOLID will be a unique opportunity for exchange of know-how, replicating good practices, networking and capacity enhancement in intercultural communication and intercontinental project management.The project activities will be expand over 15 months and will include: kick-off meeting, methodology workshop and pinpointing and research on social innovators, social innovation voyage to Tunisia, training course: Digital Tools for Social Innovation Sustainability, Local promotional events: Go Digital! Advancing and Inspiring Social Innovation in Community as well as online evaluation meeting. Through the project we will create a network and community of min. 50 innovators, they will be pinpointed on a map in Europe and MENA and will be presented using unique youth friendly narrative. In addition, we will develop a brochure on digital tools for social innovation in MENA and Europe.We expect at least 2000 youth from participating countries will have their awareness raised on social innovation and/or will get empowered to start own initiatives through the project activities, the platform and/or the brochure on digital tools for social innovation.
Lack of active citizenship, fragile democracies, outdated educational systems, religious agendas and high youth unemployment rates are some of the main concerns in MENA region. Young people are left on the margins of the job market, often lacking the employability skills, facing gaps in terms of usage of innovation and technology and not rarely being part of political and religious agendas. Although the social entrepreneurship (SE) has become a “mantra” for solving these issues in the MENA region after the Arab Spring, simple analyses of the local realities show lack of social entrepreneurship infrastructure as well as lack of sustainability of the social businesses.The lack of sustainability, does not only refer to the lack of resources for sustaining the business, but also to the format in which the SE is being practiced and how it is positioned in the socio-economic system. We believe that using innovation and digital learning are the main assets to maximize the potentials of SE and to provide tools that can contribute to its sustainability.Social innovation as such should not be only perceived from the perspective of newly born startups, but should be seen as an opportunity for further growth and development of already successfully operating businesses, even more for capacity-building of impact-making CSOs operating in the regions. In addition, the digital learning serves to provide exploitation of the social innovation through usage of newest technologies and to guarantee its durability and expansion over time. Therefore, through SOciaL Innovation and Digital learning Platform (SOLID project) we would like to empower youngsters and youth organizations to exploit innovation and technologies for social impact, thereby, making their mission durable and sustainable. SOLID will be a unique opportunity for exchange of know-how, replicating good practices, networking and capacity enhancement in intercultural communication and intercontinental project management.The project activities will be expand over 15 months and will include: kick-off meeting, methodology workshop and pinpointing and research on social innovators, social innovation voyage to Tunisia, training course: Digital Tools for Social Innovation Sustainability, Local promotional events: Go Digital! Advancing and Inspiring Social Innovation in Community as well as online evaluation meeting. Through the project we will create a network and community of min. 50 innovators, they will be pinpointed on a map in Europe and MENA and will be presented using unique youth friendly narrative. In addition, we will develop a brochure on digital tools for social innovation in MENA and Europe.We expect at least 2000 youth from participating countries will have their awareness raised on social innovation and/or will get empowered to start own initiatives through the project activities, the platform and/or the brochure on digital tools for social innovation.