The Present for the Future – Boosting Youth Social Entrepreneurship that Matters

<< Background >>We applied for this project because we wanted to further implement activities in the field of social entrepreneurship, by expanding the scope and impact at a European level. The goal of this project was to boost social entrepreneurship by actively and meaningfully engaging with the youth sector. The needs we wanted to address and have addressed were that of promoting more skilled youth workers/young social entrepreneurs through non-formal learning activities. << Objectives >>We aimed to support youth social entrepreneurship to increase innovativeness, quality, relevance and meaningfulness of youth work, which would result in boosting social inclusion of people from specific disadvantaged backgrounds. Six objectives were created. O1: Collaborate with like-minded organizations to disseminate and further enhance our models to harness the power of social entrepreneurship for a more inclusive society. O2: Develop a social entrepreneurship model that is: innovative; non-formal-learning-based; transnational; youth-lead and youth-oriented. O3: Train 6 youth workers per country on how to act as facilitators of our innovative social entrepreneurship model. O4: Engage, empower and connect 45 young social entrepreneurs per event through conducting 3 events, facilitated by youth workers for young social entrepreneurs on the topics of: Boosting inclusion and diversity & Fostering equity and equality & Supporting people facing socio-economic difficulties. O5: Directly address the needs of at least 300 people from disadvantaged backgrounds. O6: Raise awareness of youth social entrepreneurship, updated with Erasmus+ agency approval detailed in the Awareness Raising Activity.<< Implementation >>We conducted six online workshops with our three partner organizations, where we introduced our respective organizations and ongoing projects. Two workshops were dedicated to interactive collaboration, offering feedback on each other's work, discussing shared challenges, finances, planning, and hypothetical scenarios of starting anew. We executed three events in The Netherlands, Croatia, and Denmark by the end of May 2024. Additionally, three job shadowing activities were implemented to showcase our offices and work processes to our partners. Following each event, we held feedback sessions to improve our The Present for the Future model. Subsequently, we distributed our newly created model (a how-to guide for young social entrepreneurs) to 10-15 interested young people per country for testing. After refinement, we made it openly accessible online for anyone interested in utilizing it.<< Results >>The concrete outputs of our project included: a feedback survey for our guide, a project website showcasing important results, reproducible methodologies outlined in the guide for young social entrepreneurs, training materials like case studies, interactive tasks, and 'further readings', reports from events, a promotional leaflet, event photos/videos, and a comprehensive catalogue and toolkit. The toolkit features checklists, case studies, references, and an event-tutorial to inspire offline event organization. Additionally, a Memorandum of Understanding was established. Further results encompassed: 3 large meetup events to boost young social entrepreneurs and their organizations, online workshops fostering idea exchange and best practices sharing with partner organizations, youth gaining practical knowledge through training and events, establishment of networks and partnerships, knowledge-sharing opportunities, acquisition of new skills, and the structured assessment, recognition, and certification of informal and non-formal learning achievements through the training of youth. These initiatives contributed to personal and professional growth for both partner organizations and young social entrepreneurs.