Social Entrepreneurship Innovation Camp Methodology Handbook

Social Entrepreneurship Innovation Camp Methodology Handbook is an outline of the guidelines for organizing innovation camps or similar events with strong focus on social entrepreneurship. This Handbook has been developed in the framework of the INDIGISE project („Promotion of Social Entrepreneurship in the Youth Sector by Digital and Informal Education Tools“, April, 2020 – March 2022), which is focused on young people, who are looking for positive social and (or) environmental changes in society, and (or) feel the need to create own business, but lack support, competencies and finance. Combining the experience of universities’, NGOs’ and business networks’ professionals, and operating with the latest trends in education, INDIGISE project partners from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Norway provided such support and promoted youth social entrepreneurship in the Baltic Sea Region by digital and informal education tools.

This Manual is a set of interactive and innovative educational material and ICT tools as well as gamification and brainstorming methods dedicated to training, educating and raising awareness on the subject of social entrepreneurship among youth that is recommended to use by EU countries’ schools, universities, NGOs etc. 

The content of the Handbook is of a recommendatory nature, can be easily modified according to the specifics of the innovation event, and contains the following main sections:

• General parameters about when, where and how to organize the event, who should be the main key players of the innovation camp: their responsibilities and duties.
• Time schedule: how to prepare for the innovation event on time and properly.
• How to find and select the most motivated participants and to encourage sponsors, judges, trainers, conventional and (or) social business representatives, moderators, volunteers and other key players to participate in the event.

Social entrepreneurship is a unique idea – mission of the 21st century that, because of different historical and business ecosystem development as well as present attitude in different countries, is perceived and defined differently. Social entrepreneurship is a model of activity, the essential mission of which is to solve social and environmental challenges through commercial activities. Social businesses use innovative and business-based approaches to make life better in our communities or to address environmental issues. 

Innovation camps are a highly effective tool for steering young learners towards developing social business ideas, that may one day be realized, something which is not always easily achieved in a traditional classroom context, as well as the perfect way to educate and motivate academic staff, non-formal education providers, industry experts how to encourage more entrepreneurship education in the classroom.

We believe that with social entrepreneurship innovation camps a social business idea will become more understandable, recognized and attractive!

INDIGISE Project’s Partners:

• Klaipeda University (Lithuania) – Coordinator
• Social Innovation Centre (Latvia)
• Baltic Institute for Regional Affairs, BISER (Poland)
• Stowarzyszenie Gmin RP Euroregion Baltyk (Poland)
• Kristiansand Katedralskole Gimle (Norway)

INDIGISE Project’s Associated Partners:

• Junior Achievement Norway, Agder (Norway)
• National Youth Council (Latvia)
• Baltic Sea NGO Network (Poland)

Although young people constitute a substantial part of citizens worldwide, they are not fully recognised in policies and strategies, as a separate group of interest. They play a crucial role in societal and economic development and are often referred to as „agents of change“. Simultaneously, the unemployment of youth is one of the greatest global challenges.

Social entrepreneurship is a way to address this problem, contributing to sustainable and inclusive job creation.

Existing forms of youth engagement in economic activities are not sufficient and often not adequate for the targeted audience. Entrepreneurship education has very formal frames and structures, and it is rarely fostering an entrepreneurial mindset and attitudes among youngsters. There is an agreement, however, on the strong impact of youth work in entrepreneurship and culture. It develops transversal skills, gives an opportunity to exercise skills in practice and increases cultural activities which influence young people’s creativity.

Youth work and non-formal, as well as informal learning, play an important role in developing young
people’s creative and innovative potential, including entrepreneurial skills underlined in recent youth
policy and programmes at the EU and national levels. This brings us to the question of ”How to engage young people in this process successfully?”. The youth workers play a crucial role in the educational processes by introducing different initiatives (like youth cooperative activities) to the youth and providing information and advice on how to make a decision and provide the risk assessment,
be creative and understand the market’s reality. But furthermost they help to develop social skills:
establishing relations, leadership skills, conflict management and others.

1. The first chapter of the guide introduces social entrepreneurship and its importance for developing the skills and competencies of youth.
2. The second one presents the forms of learning methods: formal, informal and non-formal, their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages.
3. The next chapter reflects on the qualitative research carried out by the project partners and presents points of view of experts invited to participate, aiming at explaining the ways in which the social entrepreneurship of youth can be stimulated.
4. The fourth, last chapter describes the situation in the partner countries, as for approaches towards social entrepreneurship and interesting initiatives that are undertaken.

The guide “How to stimulate social entrepreneurship via nonformal and informal learning methods“ is being developed to assist youth workers (teachers, youth leaders, etc.). It identifies methods, techniques, and strategies for working with youth and promotes a holistic approach to young people’s entrepreneurial attitudes.

Download the document here: Guidelines “How to stimulate social entrepreneurship via non-formal and informal learning methods.”_compressed_compressed-skompresowany

About the Project

The project “Social entrepreneurship development in the in the Baltic Sea region” has been granted within Erasmus+ programme and started its realization in September 2014. Euroregion Baltic joined the Network in 2020 via its Erasmus+ project “InDigiSE – Promotion of social entrepreneurship in the youth sector by digital and informal education tools”.

InDigiSE aims at delivery of youth-oriented, innovative educational tools to develop the entrepreneurial competence in the field of social economy and engage youth within social entrepreneurship.

Its duration will be 24 months starting from April 1^st 2020 and closing on 31st March 2022, and the total amount received from Erasmus+ fund is 143.307€.

The project is led by Klaipedos Universitetas from Lithuania with the joint efforts of Kristiansand katedralskole Gimle (Norway), Baltic Institute for Regional Affairs (Poland), Socialas Inovacijas Centrs (Latvia) and Stowarzyszenie Gmin RP Euroregion Baltyk (Poland).
In the project, we will present information on social entrepreneurship and social innovation from www.socialenterprisebsr.net addressed to young people.

EUROPE 2020 states that growth has to be delivered through a strong emphasis on job creation and poverty reduction. Social entrepreneurship (SE) is exactly a w method to be used to overcome existing challenges as its main aim is to bring a positive impact to society.

In the “Social economy and social entrepreneurship Social Europe Guide Volume 4 (2013)” it is said that several key challenges of Social economy (build be SE) are found and those are:

• lack of visibility;
• lack of specialised training;
• lack of support network and infrastructure;
• access to finance;
• lack of uniform regulation.

Seven SE support organisations across the Baltic Sea developed to have a better educational and overall support for SE in the ic Sea region.

Project objectives:

• Facilitate SE sector development in the ic Sea region through proper adults education;
• Educate public bodies, municipalities, NGO’s and other players about relevant tools of SE support at the national and regional level;
• Research SE and share research findings, incorporate those in the legislative, education and other support methods and tools;
• Start and promote open educational tool as a network and startup tool to start national and cross border SE activities;
• Create stable SE support organizations network and the SE network.

Become a part of the network, and you will become visible. Social enterprises build viable futures – if you are one of them, let others also know about it!

http://www.socialenterprisebsr.net/

Read our BLOG and keep up-to-date on the latest news and articles on social enterprises and social innovation in the Nordic-Baltic area, and beyond.

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 6-7^th, 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.