3 – 9 May, 2016
Marseille, France

The Association EPEKA, the Social Enterprise, is working as a partner in a project to exchange and promote practices in the field of youth entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship with ten youth organisations from Europe.

According to Eurostat, in July 2015, 20.4% of young people under the age of 25 were unemployed in the EU. It follows that we need to take concerted and innovative action to integrate and create job opportunities for our new generations. Social entrepreneurship and new innovative business models can become a sustainable solution to address the many challenges posed by the current economic, social and environmental crisis.

The project promoted proactive citizenship by:

  • Sharing methods and creating tools among European youth workers to promote initiatives and entrepreneurship among young people,
  • exchanging innovative ideas from different European countries in the field of social entrepreneurship, set up by young people themselves or by youth organisations.

The project is in line with the current European policy (Europe 2020), which aims at a path of sustainable development and participative citizenship by promoting and supporting social entrepreneurship. The consortium of partners involved in the project consists of 9 countries: France, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Romania, Italy, Spain and Greece.

The aim of the project was to:

  • to fight youth unemployment through entrepreneurship in European countries,
  • to inspire young people and youth workers to become entrepreneurs, and to transfer and promote creativity through the exchange of good practices in the field of social entrepreneurship,
  • increase the knowledge of youth workers and young people with the aim of promoting entrepreneurship,
  • promote social entrepreneurship as a resource for sustainable development,
  • empower active European citizenship through youth initiatives in social entrepreneurship,
  • raise young people’s awareness of European sustainable development policies,
  • setting up a European network of cooperation between youth organisations in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship,
  • to introduce youth workers to tools for promoting entrepreneurship and practices for transfer to young people.
  • the project involved young people with fewer opportunities, young people with disabilities, young people from ethnic minorities, migrants, etc.

The aim of the project was to share good practices in youth self-employment, youth entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship.

27 youth workers, three from each European country, each specialised in youth entrepreneurship or social entrepreneurship, and a Swiss institution did a survey on youth social business practices and initiatives and methods of entrepreneurship at national level, which we presented at a 7-day seminar in France in May 2016.

For more information, please send an email with a cover letter and CV to epeka@epeka.si.
Project coordinator of the participating 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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