Social enterprise: sharing best practice as a tool in youth work
Social enterprise is recognised by the European Commission as having a significant part to play in the future economic wellbeing of Europe. In 2011 the Commission launched the Social Business Initiative (SBI) with the slogan “There is no economic growth and jobs creation without social entrepreneurship”.
The project
Community Action Dacorum is leading a two-year project, co-funded with support from the European Comission, which is designed to increase understanding and skills in the use of social enterprise as an effective tool in youth work. We are one of eight partners in seven countries and have designed the project to ensure we both create an environment for knowledge transfer and building long-term effective relationship between partners and participants.
Promoting entrepreneurship – The aim of the project is to increase the knowledge and expertise about social enterprise among youth workers, who in turn can cascade their learning into practical initiatives to enable young people to improve their knowledge/understanding of social enterprise and all the skill sets required to achieve positive outcomes (communication, team work, budgetary, language skills, marketing, HR etc.)
Social inclusion – The project is designed to:
-foster the development of social, civic, intercultural competences and critical thinking, media literacy, combat discrimination, segregation, racism, bullying and violence;
-enhance the access, participation and learning performance of disadvantaged learners and reducing disparities in learning outcomes.
In additional to the priorities above, the project also contributes to the following:
- Achievement of relevant and high-quality skills and competences. Through training events we support individuals in acquiring and developing key competences relating to basic, transversal and soft skills, and entrepreneurial skills which will feed into improving their employability and the employability / personal development of the young people they work with.
- Promoting quality youth work Training events and a wider project dialogue supports the capacity building of partners and their youth workers (both staff and volunteers).
The project started on February 1st, 2018.
The partners are from:
- UK: Community Action Dacorum;
- UK: Stephens and George Charitable Trust;
- Serbia: Novi Sad Humanitarian Centre;
- Sweden: Solna Youth Center;
- Romania: Asociatia Clubul Sportiv Experienta Multisport;
- Ireland: Amach LGBT!;
- Czech Republic: ASK CR;
- Czech Republic: Patrklic help, z.s.
This material has been co-funded with support from the European Comission. The content of this material reflects the views only of the authors and the National Agency or the European Comission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information.