The lack of visibility, specialized training, support network and infrastructure, as well as limited access to finance are the main burdens that slow down the transition towards social economy and interfere social entrepreneurs for a larger scale social impact. And managing enterprise is even harder when one is only 20 years old or younger. Nevertheless, social entrepreneurship is getting more seen and valued thanks to the activity of youth leaders and support of educators, NGOs, specially designed legislative and CSR business support, social business networks, alternative financing and infrastructure, that allows modern youth to become successful in changing tomorrow. The access to the information on social business development practices and tools needs to be provided to the larger society groups, therefore special attention in new social-impact-oriented INDIGISE project will be put on youth social entrepreneurship empowerment.
The target audience of INDIGISE project are young people who seek a positive social or environmental changes in society, feel the need to create their own business, but lack support of competencies and finance. Combining the experience of universities’, NGOs’ and business networks’ professionals, and operating with latest trends in education, INDIGISE project partners from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Norway will provide such support and promote youth social entrepreneurship in Baltic Sea Region by digital and informal education tools. As agreed during the first partnership Zoom meeting on May 6-7th, INDIGISE partners will:
- deliver youth-oriented, innovative educational tools to develop the entrepreneurial competence in the field of social economy and engage youth within social entrepreneurship;
- spread the idea of social entrepreneurship in the Nothern European Region within the youth sector;
- provide the necessary competencies and support tools to enable young people to develop social business ideas;
- promote the concept of social entrepreneurship and support Baltic Sea Region social enterprise start-ups by maintaining an Open Education Resource platform www.socialenterprisebsr.net;
- encourage young people in innovative and creative thinking, collaboration and risk uptake via InnoCamps, organized in Norway and Lithuania;
- provide InnoCamp Methodology Handbook – step-by-step replicable and transferable tool for youth, schools, NGOs, educators etc.;
- promote good practices among local and international partners to achieve sustainable and collaborative social business support within the youth sector.
During the meeting, which was initially planned to happen in Riga, Latvia, but was moved to an online setting, partners have discussed planned activities, implementation processes, project management and tools, which will be used to maximise the impact of the project.
The first Intellectual Output (IO1) will focus on the improvement of existing knowledge and networking platform www.socialenterprisebsr.net, which was first launched in 2014 as a part of Erasmus+ project “Social entrepreneurship development in Baltic Sea region”. Since then, all BSR countries has contributed to the promotion of social entrepreneurship.
INDIGISE aims to improve the platform by adjusting it to the younger entrepreneurs, aged 16-30, and offering relevant Open Educational Resource (OER) information on social business support mechanisms and tools, promoting young social entrepreneurs, equipping with relevant educational materials and networking services.
As an IO2, special guidelines for youth centers and youth organizations will be developed on “How to stimulate social entrepreneurship via informal learning methods incl. gamification methods”. A number of stakeholder organisations working with youth will be engaged, incl. project associated partners – Junior Achievement Norway, National Youth Council (Latvia), Baltic Sea NGO Network (Poland).
InnoCamp Methodology Handbook will be designed within the partnership as IO3 to support onsite and online education of young people, including 2 InnoCamp training events, which will take place in 2021 in Norway and Lithuania.
To deliver the knowledge generated by INDIGISE, 4 Forums will be organised in Poland, Lithuania, Norway and Latvia, gaining participants from the youth sector to promote the guidelines, InnoCamp Methodology handbook and OER platform.
Project partners:
Klaipeda University (Lithuania) – coordinator
Baltic Institute for Regional Affairs, BISER (Poland)
Social Innovation Centre (Latvia)
Kristiansand katedralskole Gimle (Norway)
Euroregion Baltic – Stowarzyszenie Gmin RP Euroregion Baltyk (Poland)
Associated partners:
- Junior Achievement Norway,
- National Youth Council (Latvia),
- Baltic Sea NGO Network (Poland).
Project duration: April 2020 – March 2022
The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.