To combat youth unemployment the European Union and its member states are using apprenticeships as a solution. Public money is being used to encourage employers to invest in young people as apprentices. For employers however, it is not a level playing field the barriers for micro, small and medium sized enterprises are significant and prevent them from taking on apprentices. In the UK less than 10% of SMEs will take on an apprentice compared to a third of large companies who will do so. Given that the consensus, amongst academic studies and labour market experts is that growth in employment will come from SMEs, there is a danger that these business organisations will not engage with apprenticeships and public investment will not be as effective as it could be. This is what the project will seek to address, it will take good practice from two countries which have good records at assisting SMEs to take on an apprentice, and import this into three who wish to do better. The partnership will then continue to work at developing further innovation, so that a training programme and resources are produced that help SMEs overcome the barriers they face in apprenticeship engagement. We wish to create an easy to access, one stop shop where even the smallest of businesses have all the knowledge and skill they require to recruit an apprentice of their own. The coordinating partner is a local authority, with a low job density, and 99.85% of businesses within it are SMEs. The vision is that by the end of this project they will have based within their Economic Development Team capacity and capability to deliver the training and officers equipped to provide the one stop service local businesses require. By the end of this project we will have worked with 270 SMEs who will have taken on at least 1 apprentice for the first time, and a total of 360 young people will have completed or be on course to complete an apprenticeship. We will see significant increase in awareness among young people of the opportunities an apprenticeship will provide as the project will engage with 30 secondary schools in partner countries. Further, we will see a significant increase in the understanding of SMEs about the benefits of having an apprentice. An expected impact is within the regions that partners in Bulgaria, Poland and the United Kingdom operate, there will be a significant increase in SME Apprenticeship Engagement. Finally the project will host a large UK based dissemination event hosting a minimum of 300 stakeholders, with the aim that the projects transferable outputs will be adopted elsewhere.