The Youth Exchange “YOUth can move the world forward” will gather 35 participants from 5 countries: Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Latvia and Israel and will take place in Athens, Greece. The main aim of the exchange is to empower youth through non-formal learning on the topic of social entrepreneurship and motivate them to go from observers and listeners to creators and innovators.
During the 8 days of the activities, participants will share realities and experiences about the social issues we face in our countries and will discuss the role of social entrepreneurship as an answer to these problems. As we all have experience in volunteer activities and youth work, we know from firsthand that working for a social cause can contribute to the improvement of our society.
Through workshops, study visits, social analysis and discussions, we will increase our knowledge and understanding of different aspects, concepts, stakeholders and supporters of social entrepreneurship and increase our competences as social entrepreneurs. We will learn about European and national funding possibilities and opportunities related to youth social entrepreneurship. We will visit successful social enterprises in Athens and job shadow their work in order to see from firsthand the impact they have on social workers and on society. After the theoretical approach and our study visits, we will develop our own initiatives of social enterprises and will present them in an open event the last day of our main activities. Participants will be challenged and empowered to explore new tools, digital equipment, different concepts and ideas.
This Youth Exchange will be a great opportunity for young people of different cultural backgrounds to understand each other, share their experiences, explore the similarities of their behaviours towards minimizing the social problems we face, explore the field of social entrepreneurship, learn from each other and finally address change in our societies.
All activities will be based on non-formal learning. The methodology implemented during all activities will be a combination of: learning from experiencing different activities involving people from different cultures and backgrounds, learning through games, actions and playful environment, having youth as content creators.
In the end of the exchange participants are expected to be aware of the impact of social entrepreneurship in our societies and know a little bit more about the opportunities they have for starting their own social enterprise. They will undergo an extensive workshop cycle of the social entrepreneurship world and will learn its power to ameliorate our societies; they are expected to drive the change towards youth social contribution to our societies and their own personal improvement and empowerment in the field. Furthermore, they will become more ready to develop projects connected to entrepreneurship and mobility of young people.
The energy of young people and their belief that they can change the world will act catalytically to transform our ideas into sustainable social enterprises. This is our basic goal, to drive youth inventiveness and inspire youth through workshops, games, good practices, interviews and with each other interactions. It is important that European people and especially youth, who are the ones that determine our common European future become active independent citizens that can create a better society for all.
The project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of European Union.
