YES

From 2021 to 2023 we are participating in the YES project (Youth Employment and Social entrepreneurship), co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission. It is a partnership with organisations from Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, China and Romania, that are putting their heads together to increase youth education and employability. This will be achieved in the form of social entrepreneurship.

The core of the project is to develop a strategic, locally-tailored youth entrepreneurship framework in the participating countries, so that young people have a chance to emerge from unemployment through entrepreneurship into self-employment. It thus wants to empower young people, from the ages of 18-24, with knowledge and skills on social entrepreneurship.

The main goals are:

  • To establish action plans to stimulate youth entrepreneurship and employment, i.e. much-needed local policy frameworks;
  • To establish local task forces, enlisting business, academia and decision-makers as active contributors to the action plans’ development, together with young people and youth workers;
  • To create a supportive environment on a local level to expand young people’s knowledge and entrepreneurial skills.

Kick-Off Meeting

Due to COVID-measures, the Kick-Off meeting for the YES project was held online on 18 August 2021. This virtual meeting was a good opportunity to connect with our project partners from Romania, Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria and China. The project was thoroughly explained and the key activities were planned. In this way, all organizations were ready to take the next steps in the project!

Rotary

Mark Williams, the President of the Rotary Club of Brisbane, project partner within this project, explained us on 17 October 2021 how Rotary clubs are organised in Australia and in Belgium. This ensures the involvement of local business people in Belgium in the subsequent activities as they possess both the knowledge and the experience to get an idea going. Thank you Mark for sending us a recommendation to our local Rotary club.

Internationale training : SPARK en FUEL

A group of young people from Belgium participated in the SPARK (18 and 20 October) and FUEL (25 and 27 October) trainings organized by QUT (Queensland University of Technology) from Brisbane, Australia. These programs want to empower young people with knowledge on social entrepreneurship, so that they can develop the necessary competences to take matters into their own hands. SPARK is a program that talks about the main principles of entrepreneurship and teaches young people a new way of thinking. FUEL is a course that helps young people with which steps they need to take in making their own ideas a reality. In the next step, we will try to implement these ideas on a local level.

Task force meetings

On 13 October 2021 and 7 December 2021, we organized the first two task force meetings in Brussels. These task forces are the YES mechanism for coordination and communication with all stakeholders. They consists of representatives of local businesses, fundraising experts and experienced networkers. We would like to express our gratitude to the 7 representatives who all attended both meetings.