Boosting entrepreneurship of youth

<< Background >>We applied for this project to address the critical challenges faced by youth with fewer opportunities, particularly those from low-income households, minority backgrounds, or broken families. Many of these young people lack access to entrepreneurial education, skills, and support, which are essential for achieving stable income and independence. Despite the EU's emphasis on integrating underprivileged youth into society, there is a noticeable gap in individualized programs that tackle both personal and societal obstacles to their success. So, the consortium applied for this project to address the critical needs of youth with fewer opportunities, who lack of understanding of societal functions, including the labor market, and face strong fears about their futures prospects. These challenges are compounded by the absence of family or social support, financial stability, and knowledge of where to seek help. Our project ENT_Youth was designed to bridge this gap by fostering personal development among youth and raising social awareness to combat negative perceptions and discrimination, ensuring a more inclusive and supportive environment for their success.<< Objectives >>The ENT_Youth project main objective was to help youth with fewer opportunities to become social entrepreneurs by providing them with relevant training, mentorship, and online tools to generate and implement their ideas. Through the project, we successfully achieved:1. Conducted a thorough evaluation of social entrepreneurship skills and practices to better support youth with fewer opportunities in partner countries, while enhancing youth workers' qualifications and competencies to train and mentor young entrepreneurs using newly developed methods.2. Developed an interactive online platform to support youth with fewer opportunities.3. Organized capacity training for youth to raise their capacity to start a business. 4. Implemented a Mentorship Programme to guide underprivileged youngsters on their journey to business creation.5. Ensured effective promotion, dissemination, and sustainability of the project outcomes, reaching the target groups and stakeholders effectively. In conclusion, the ENT_Youth project successfully empowered youth with fewer opportunities by boosting their capacity for social entrepreneurship, equipping them with the tools, skills, and support to overcome barriers and achieve meaningful change.<< Implementation >>The project activities were carefully designed so that they follow up in time and logically, or complement and create individual project results. The project was implemented the following activities:1. Project management2. Developed the guidelines and organizing training course3. Development of Social Business Planning Programme and test validation4. Development of the Social Enterpreneurship Scheme (organizing capacity training and mentorship programme)5. Dissemination and sustainabilityAll project activities were designed to achieve the planned results. The project management and implementation activities were designed to ensure the execution of the project and the monitoring of its progress. The intellectual products produced by the activities led to the achievement of concrete project results. Dissemination events helped to make the results known to the public, to ensure their visibility, accessibility, and wider use.Through transnational project meetings, the organizations addressed project management and intellectual outputs issues, boosted the team spirit, learned through sharing expertise & field visits.<< Results >>The main outputs:1. Development of the guidelines to raise youth workers qualifications and competence on how to support young entrepreneurs. 2. Invent 13 methods and 21 good practices.3. Organized 4 days training course in Bratislava.4. Created Social Business Planning Programme Online as a unique tool to help future entrepreneurs plan their goals and business ideas.5. Created Social Entrepreneurship Scheme consisting of Capacity Training for youth with fewer opportunities.6. Developed Mentorship Programme for youth with fewer opportunities.7. Organized multiplier events in each partner country.Qualitative results:1. Contributed to raising of youth worker's qualifications and competence on how to support young entrepreneurs with fewer opportunities.2. Trained youth workers to be entrepreneurship mentors and strengthened specialists skills & competencies when working with the underprivileged youth.3. Raised qualifications/skills essential for the entrepreneurship of the involved youth with fewer opportunities. 4. Raised qualifications of involved specialists (social, youth workers).5. Raised awareness of target groups regarding youth with fewer opportunities entrepreneurship issues via Multipliers events.