GROUND UP : SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM BOOST FOR RESILIENT CITIES

The project focuses on development of place-based methodologies enabling youth organizations and other actors to build ecosystems that boost social entrepreneurial activity. The methodology will enable youth organizations accomplish these objectives: to identify challenges and obstacles that inhibit supportive environments; to strengthen social entrepreneurial ecosystems from the ground up, enabling cities to identify smarter paths of empowering young people; to identify transferable good practices from initiatives, projects with high social and environmental impact; to understand the needs, motivations of stakeholders involved in developing social entrepreneurial ecosystems; to create a unified evidence-based framework indicating elements critical to success locally.The project will include 11 organizations representing North Macedonia, Costa Rica, South Africa, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Austria, Denmark, Ecuador, Serbia and Peru. The project will include series of capacity building and mobility activities designed with aim to reach following objectives: to evaluate local contexts and support the creation of conducive social entrepreneurial environments using created methodology; to gather and analyse practices implemented and transfer these practices in the field of youth; to develop competences of youth workers in new methodology thus increasing quality of activities targeting young people with fewer opportunities and developing their entrepreneurial competences and to encourage collaboration in the creation of local and international projects addressing challenges that prevent supportive social entrepreneurial ecosystems. Key project results will be increased capacities of organizations to support creating supportive environment for social entrepreneurship and new methodology available to youth organizations and other stakeholders. The methodology will be a framework including indicators and metrics applicable to building social entrepreneurial environments for young people. We aim to look at what has been done, what has worked well and what is not working well as a springboard for developing solid and effective frameworks well-suited for empowering young people. This new methodology would modernize youth work. Social enterprise friendly cities, and ownership at the citizen level, will revitalize the contexts that young people live in, the creation of new types of work, future-based skills and ignition of ideas that can inform policy. An activated community could address the issue of high failure rates in youth entrepreneurship, once citizens or locals are aware about social enterprise, new markets and support systems for products, services and youth employment will be created. Finally, with a population close to 1.8 billion, youth are the future, hence empowering them now to be drivers of change, by building their capacity will help to proliferate the results of this project.