17 – 25 October, 2015
Tomaszów Lubelski, Poland
The Association EPEKA, Soc. Ent., as a partner organisation, participated in the youth education project “Your Social Footprint through Entrepreneurship”, which took place in Poland from 17 to 25 October 2015.
”Give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you will feed him for life.” (Chinese proverb)
Reflecting on this proverb, we can see that social entrepreneurship has great power because its mission is to bring innovative solutions to various social issues.
The project was organised to promote entrepreneurship as a tool for solving social problems and to encourage NGOs to adopt this approach. The young people learned from the context of social entrepreneurship in Poland and gained knowledge, skills and tools for new ideas in their own environment.
This included visits to entrepreneurial organisations, guest speakers, informal learning on public speaking, business models, marketing research and creativity.
The working language of the exchange was English, but the lack of language skills was not a barrier to participation, but an incentive for active communication and broadening of skills.
The project was funded by the EU Ersamus+ programme.
The youth exchange promoted the European YOUTHPASS certificate.
The costs of accommodation, meals and the programme were covered by the activity organiser or the host organisation. The proportion of travel costs reimbursed per participant from Slovenia was determined according to distance, which can be checked here: http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/tools/distance_en.htm
Project reference number: 2015-1-PL01-KA105-013969
Partner organisations:
1. EPEKA Association Slovenia
2. YAHTE, France
3. Argus Group, Bulgaria
4. Super Tineri ASIRYS, Romania
5. Ies Rambla de Nogalte, Spain
6. Summer Work & Travel Alumni Association, Macedonia
7. Youth for Marof, MZM, Croatia
8. Association “Czajnia”, Poland – coordinator and host
Some highlights from the youth exchange and workshops:
GALLERY
Text from a trainee
The youth worker training took place from 17 – 25 October in Tomaszow Lubelskie, Poland. In total, we gathered 24 participants from Poland, Macedonia, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, France and Bulgaria.
The word entrepreneurship was unknown to me before the training, but we got to know it well during the training in Poland. The vast majority of the workshops were specifically about social entrepreneurship, or social entrepreneurship, which has been very much encouraged by the EU in recent years. Among other things, we learnt about how social entrepreneurship is regulated in different EU countries, so I can confirm that it is relatively well regulated in Slovenia, whereas in many other countries
in many other countries.
The location of the exchange itself was Tomaszow Lubelskie in the Roztocze region, about 10 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. The town itself, as well as the region, is one of the most deprived areas in Poland, and social entrepreneurship is particularly encouraged in such areas. During the training, we visited some good practice examples and got to know more about social entrepreneurship in Poland as well as the people there. I find such visits very useful in the context of training, especially when it comes to a topic such as social entrepreneurship.
One of the tasks we were given was to develop our own business idea that could be implemented as a social enterprise. The only limitation was that each person only had an initial EUR 10 (the task was called the EUR 10 Exercise). It was really interesting to see the variety of ideas that were generated – from a local newspaper – to a dog walking business. The organisation that organised the training was Czajnia. What struck me about the organisation was that it was not a youth organisation, but a local association which, among other things, is involved in Erasmus+ projects. Anyway, I think that all the participants were satisfied with the organisation of the training, especially with the Polish evening that they prepared for us. I have been on a few projects all over Europe, but nowhere has a host country presented its culture and customs so well – they prepared typical Polish dishes, music, showed us their traditional dance, national costumes, we even danced with them.
Erasmus+ projects are definitely a great opportunity to get to know countries and a great way of informal education. It’s not just about meeting others and learning, you also learn a lot about yourself in this way.
Tine Šteger, participant
For more information, please send an e-mail with a cover letter and CV to epeka@epeka.si.
Project coordinator of the partner organisation: Štefan Simončič, President of the Association EPEKA, Soc. Ent., stefan@epeka.si.
Project Promotion: Tjaša Teržan, the Association EPEKA, Soc. Ent., associate, tjasa@epeka.si.
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