Within the project, we aimed to empower young people through a set of carefully designed activities. Throughout this process, the young people have implemented their activities and developed local projects to address the challenges in their own communities, ranging from poverty to social exclusion.
The programme was implemented with 40 young people, and as planned, at least 20 projects have been developed by the participants in the field of social entrepreneurship, each targeting key local issues. During this process, the young people were supported in three main stages: the Kick-Off Training of the Give a Chance Programme (which aimed to qualify the young people as entrepreneurs), the Virtual Module (which facilitated collaboration among participants while monitoring the progress of their local projects), and the Evaluation Training of the Give a Chance Programme (which focused on developing new projects and scaling the ideas generated).
In addition to that, experienced youth workers actively engaged in the programme as mentors, supporting the young people both in contextual and technical aspects. A qualification training for mentors was implemented to increase their skills in working with young people, ensuring they could provide tailored guidance and practical tools. Alongside this, guiding material was developed and shared to facilitate the implementation and strengthen the sustainability of the overall programme.
Give a Chance Programme
The program was consisted of three stages :
- Kick-Off of Give a Chance
To reach out to young people, we implemented a kick-off training focused on social entrepreneurship, youth work, and the consideration of social contexts in developing entrepreneurial activities. During this activity, the young people designed their own projects from scratch and presented them through pitching sessions. In this way, they gained their first practical experience in pitching ideas and developed a concrete understanding of how to implement social entrepreneurship projects.
- Implementation of Local Projects and Virtual Module
We supported the development of local projects with seed-funding provided in the form of in-kind purchases (the money was not given directly to participants, but the necessary goods and services were purchased by the partner organisations), up to a maximum of 1800 EUR per project. During this phase, the young people engaged other members of their communities in the design and implementation of their projects. The activities were designed to generate income in the long run while simultaneously addressing social issues at the local level. The Virtual Module served as a space for collaboration, where participants shared updates, monitored progress, and received ongoing support.
- Evaluation of the Give a Chance Programme
In the 18th month of the project, we carried out the evaluation activity to reflect on the participants’ experiences and analyse how the process unfolded. This included identifying both achievements and challenges faced during the implementation of the activities. The evaluation gave us the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the programme and to extract lessons learned, which will guide the design of future programmes aimed at empowering young people through social entrepreneurship.
Demo Days
The organisations (GEGED, Verdesur, AVWB and ASED) will implement demo days to present the ideas of the young people and engage local community more into the process. The idea of implementing this events is to find funding for the young people’s ideas and make their initiatives implemented within the project sustainable.
During the demo days, the participants involved in the project will share their projects outcomes to the business angels, the funding organisations, the local public and private organisations to engage larger audience to the activities while trying to find additional funding. The aim of the activity is to increase the sustainability of the project.
Sustain the Change
Sustain the Change Trainings will be implemented with 20 organisation representatives in each country. The aim of these trainings is to multiply the knowledge in organisation level concerning social entrepreneurship, share experience as well as increasing the visibility of Erasmus+ and other EU programs funding in partner and programme countries. We plan to present the outputs in a training of trainers format to ensure that the project results will inspire the others and will be used for the sustainability of the project activities.
The reports of the activities up to this date can be reach from here.
