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YES for Entrepreneurial Youth NGOs, YES for Millen..
YES for Entrepreneurial Youth NGOs, YES for Millennials Changers
Start date: Sep 1, 2015,
End date: Oct 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project ”YES for Entrepreneurial Youth NGOs, YES for Millennials Changers” is implemented by 3 organizations from Romania, Spain and Germany. It has a duration of 14 months. The consortium consists of ACE-ES Romania, Cesur and bbw gGmbH.
Within the current organizational structures and environments, youth organizations find an increasingly difficult to raise funds. Therefore, in this time of social and economic crisis social enterpreneurship could be strongly seen as a viable mechanism for NGOs’ sustainability and also a powerful tool for inspiring, educating and supporting new generations to act as active and responsible citizens. The percentage of NEETs in Romania, in Spain and all over the Europe is very high. The new youth generation – so called ”Millennials – The Generation Y” (Engaged, Optimistic, and Charitable) requires creative and entrepreneurial ways of involvement as active citizens. The European Commission stressed the fact that the youth organisations are one of the main providers of non-formal and informal learning leading to an entrepreneurial mindset and skills. In this regard, it is an urgent need to strengthening the support for youth organisations in providing guidance, mentoring and quality training. But to do so for their beneficiaries the youth NGOs also need trained human resources, work tools, focused action plans and professional volunteers to sustain them. A youth NGO needs to become a “professional actor” capable to attract the best resources, to produce significant changes, to create value through social business/social economy, to include more beneficiaries, to expand the area of intervention and to develop new services and projects.
The general aim of the project is to stimulate transnational exchange of good practices and relevant experiences in developing modern and challenging action-based learning contexts for professional people of the youth NGOs (with a special focus on youth workers) based on social enterpreneurship so that they could stimulate development of their organisations and their target groups on economically sustainable basis. The project focuses on 3 specific objectives:
O1 – Enhancing the professional development of at least 30 experts of youth NGOs from Romania, Spain and Germany (with a special focus on youth workers) through combined training approach in social entrepreneurship (practical workshops and elearning modules).
O2 – Promoting a proactive and innovative non-formal way of learning/working with young volunteers of an entrepreneurial youth NGO called LIVE Laboratory and elaborating a methodology for this Lab.
O3 - Strengthening the cooperation between youth organisations and public authorities through a transnational online network in order to foster social entrepreneurship initiatives.
Project methodology is a participatory one based on:
- creative tools and methods so that activities are implemented with participants rather than for them;
- a culture of transnational cooperation and knowledge among different types of participants. There a variety of activities grouped into 3 components consisting of: paractical workshops; collaborative online group; developing 8 e-learning modules to expand social enterpreneurship knowledge and practical experiences of the youth workers/experts from youth NGOs; developing an implementation methodology of LIVE Lab as a new way of working with volunteers for the prosperity of the organization as a whole; setting up a transnational online network of cooperation composed of a large mix of youth organizations, public authorities, professionals, for learning and acting together in terms of fostering social enterpreneurship within the youth NGOs.
The main expected results are the following:
Youth workers and other experts of youth NGOs are getting new know-how, professional skills and awareness on social entrepreneurship so that they could promote and use the take-up of practical entrepreneurial experiences in education, training and youth work. It will be promoted LIVE Laboratory - a proactive and innovative non-formal way of learning/working with young volunteers in the spirit of an entrepreneurial youth NGO. A long lasting transnational online network is created from different type of organizations (mainly youth organisations and public authorities) in order to foster social entrepreneurship initiatives.
The long term benefits of the project are: the participants become resource persons and they support cascading of knowledge in their orgnizations and their local communities; participating organizations transfer each other information, good practices and know-how and foster a more dynamic and committed environment inside them; the stakeholders will contribute to a better understanding and recognition of the role played by youth NGOs, Millenials and social entrepreneurship for a brighter social and economic future.