The project ‘Alliance for Green Entrepreneurship’ (AGE) will address adult learners and will work on fostering sustainable entrepreneurship education by creating a specialised, learner-driven educational materials and resources, dedicated to the development of competences for creating circular economy models, green start ups and digital enterprises for promoting social innovation and strengthen the third sector entities.

AGE Objectives

The specific project objectives of the ‘Alliance for Green Entrepreneurship’ are:

• To enhance the evolution of ecofriendly mind-sets among individual learners by strengthening the educational offer and providing opportunities for building skills in the field of green entrepreneurship;
• To raise awareness about the existence of specific tools for development of green start-ups, such as the ECO Business Model Canvas (for circular economy) and numerous best practices in Europe that could be reproduced in other countries;
• To support green entrepreneurship education through the elaboration of an OER as tangible outcome, offering a specific guide for the development of circular economic model for 3rd sector entities, in particular based on
  initiating green enterprises and innovation;
• To raise competences, exchange and disseminate good practices related to education to green economy and training on sustainable entrepreneurship among educators, mentors, trainers within adult educational entities;
• To support quality improvements and extension of the offer of learning opportunities tailored to individual learners, thanks to establishing cross-sectorial cooperation among various stakeholders.

2-Day Meeting Sofia

On January 20th-21st 2022 the AGE partnership kicked off in Sofia, Bulgaria. Denitsa presented the time line of the 2-year project.

The project will produce 3 tangible outcomes that refer to – research report on the state of the art of green entrepreneurship and sustainable education in the partner countries, educational content on topics relevant for teaching sustainable entrepreneurship, OER
that will gather the necessary information and will be an interactive resource for adult learners interested to develop green start ups and to become entrepreneurs thanks to the model of circular economy. – testing phase of the outputs ( local work) Learners having entrepreneurial idea relevant for green economy will be able to test the educational materials and deliver feedback on their improvement and userfriendliness.

The partnership ‘Alliance for Green entrepreneurship’ (AGE) is co-funded by the Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Union.

Definition Social Entrepreneurship

There are several definitions of Social Entrepreneurship. In the SesyCare application we defined it as: ‘A social entrepreneur is a person who pursues novel applications that have the potential to solve community-based problems. These individuals are willing to take on the risk and effort to create positive changes in society through their initiatives.’

Wikipedia Definition Social Entrepreneurship

On Wikipedia they define Social entrepreneurship as ‘an approach by individuals, groups, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues.’ Wikipedia is a volunteer-run project, a very interesting and succesfull entrepreneurial source format of ‘what you would like to know about certain topics, persons, institutions, organisations and companies. Why people always go to Wikipedia to know more about a certain topic or to get a definition is not clear for me. Wikipedia is not a reliable source and overrated (it does not have a scientific trademark). Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time. This means that any information it contains at any particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong…

Social Entrepreneurship is Entrepreneurship

We should not overcomplicate things. My definition on the topic social entrepreneurship is pretty clear:

‘‘Social Entrepreneurship is Entrepreneurship (with a Social Product and / or Service)’. It does not matter if your poduct or your service is to improve social issues through your businesses. You can only successfully tackle social issues while generating profit… You can only make a loss with your social enterprise for a short period, in the end you will go down without a profitable business model, unless your shareholders/ owners are (local) government(s). Keep in mind that due to an unhealthy ideology and neverending funding by local governments the chances on staying a social enterprise making (big) loss are more or less forever.

This article is part of a presentation given by Pieter van Schie MA on Zoom d.d. December 18th 2020 for the project Sesycare

The European Partnership ‘Social Entrepreneurship Skills to Young CAREgivers of people with chronic Illness, also known as SESYCARE is delighted to kick-off the project December 18th. The meeting will be follwed by a Webinar on Social Entrepreneurship and Young Carers.

SesyCare Project Outline

Sesycare Webinar

After the Zoom kick off, a webinar about social netrepreneurship will take place

For more information, click SesyCare project website

The Erasmus+ project SESYCARE offers social entrepreneurship skills to young caregivers and provides them with opportunities for accessing EU funded projects.

Young Carers

The Young Carers in this project are children or young people who look after family members who are ill or have disabilities. They take over similar caregiving responsibilities to those of adult family carers and need special support. The purpose of this project is to summarize the body of knowledge about young carers’ lives with a special focus on their personal experiences, the impact of caring, needs and coping behaviors and offer specific social entrepreneurship education and offer social entrepreneurship activities among such a vulnerable group.

Young carers are often hidden, forgotten or ignored by policymakers and service providers at national and local levels. They do not feature in the literature on community care, family care, and children’s rights; and young carers’ experiences and needs are not explicitly recognized in social and family policies. The long-term implications of caregiving responsibilities on young carers’ health or psycho-social development need to be further documented. Several studies according to the European umbrella association Eurocarers reported that many young people in families with chronically ill members are highly involved in caring. Due to this responsibility, they spend most of their time at home. Although the caregiving experiences are pervasive, young people conceal the conditions of their relatives from others. They also do not want to be identified as young carers. Thus, their social experiences are limited. These children or adolescents would like to live a “normal life”. They prioritize their family member’s needs over their own.

Those young people need professional support, which recognizes the real needs of their family members. A social entrepreneur is a person who pursues novel applications that have the potential to solve community-based problems. These individuals are willing to take on the risk and effort to create positive changes in society through their initiatives. A social entrepreneur is interested in starting a business for greater social good and not just the pursuit of profits. It is not rare that people who have a family history of illness in their family become aware of community-based problems. Several reviews show that since 2007 the situation of affected children and adolescents has achieved an important place in international research. Based on the included studies, it is possible to identify theoretical models that help to describe and explain the phenomenon of young carers.

In order to provide appropriate support and interventions, it is of importance for the professionals to know and consider that a family-oriented perspective is vital. We will focus on offering social entrepreneurial skills and inform them about EU funded opportunities and training for young people who wish to develop their social entrepreneurship.