Search for European Projects

STRENGTHENING ENTREPRENEURIAL SPARKS
Start date: Jun 1, 2016, End date: May 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Despite political measures and efforts, we are still not able to confirm the termination of the euro crisis with Southern European counties facing years of low growth. According to ILO (2014), younger age groups suffered most from the crisis. Our project SPARK will focus on the youth (aged between 18 and 30) and encourage them to undertake an entrepreneurial path which has been considered as a way out potential from the economic crisis. OECD &EU’s Policy Brief on Youth Entrepreneurship (2012) advocates that prior work and entrepreneurship experience is a major determinant of business start-up and entrepreneurship performance. Researches also support findings such as young people do face problems in translating their ideas into business due to lack of knowledge in financial sources and how to access them, being part of a network and networking, and marketing their ideas at national and international levels. We understand that young people typically lack human, financial and social capital necessary both to set up and successfully run a new business. We propose to tackle these issues by establishing an online learning centre and developing contents on youth and social entrepreneurship based on a comprehensive needs analysis research, sharing innovative start-up business across EU countries in a publication and circulate it to stakeholders and potential young entrepreneurs; providing mentoring session by trained mentors; organising national networking events and introducing young business ideas with investors; and internship opportunities abroad. SPARK will focus on 15 young potential entrepreneur and 5 mentors in each of its partner countries: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Turkey. Our project's intellectual outputs will be:1- Strategic Policy Paper on Youth Enterpreneurship in Partner Countries - to be based on needs analysis and literature review and share by stakeholders and policy makers. 2- Interactive E-learning Centre for Strengthening Enterpreneurship Skills of Youth - to be developed and piloted during our our project and finalised at the end of our project.3- Best Practices Resource Book on Youth Enterpreneurship in the EU Member States - to be developed and shared widely to encourage and insipire young people. SPARK is consisted of the following training activities:1- Training of 20 mentors - to take place in Greece for 5 days2 - Internship mobility opportutnity for 8 young enterpreneur candidate abroad during one month3- Combined e-learning and mentoring sessions on Enterpreneurship skills and social enterpreneurship - to be completed in 4 months by 60 young people in four partner countries.With our project’s activities, we will be contributing to the promotion of entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurship among young people. We will be also addressing the priority of open and innovative education, training and youth work, embedded in the digital era through the e-learning centre we will be developing. This project will be carried out transnationally in order to bring about the exchange of best practices in entrepreneurship policies. We will also reach out potential entrepreneurs in all partner countries which will multiply our project's impact. We will be endorsing EU's policies on entrepreneurship promotion in order to contribute to the EU's goals on youth employment and sustainable job creation. In our project partnership there are 3 universities, a chamber of commerce (ATO, applicant), a public body (IBIMET) and a CSO (IED). All partners are chosen strategically in terms of their track record and specific contributions they would make to our project. Our project will also organise a total of 5 multiplier events in all partner countries whereby we will gather our target group with business persons including investors and facilitate networking which is crucial for our potential enterpreneurs.
Up2Europe Ads

Coordinator

Details

5 Partners Participants