Youth – Page 2 – Social Enterprise Development in the Baltic Sea Region

PAPER
Youth Associations and Entrepreneurship: Insights from Case Studies in Portugal

Young people in western societies currently live in a paradoxical social condition: never has a generation been so qualified, nurturing high aspirations and expectations throughout school, regarding the value of employability and professional progression, while unemployment rates reach worrying values in younger population, a situation that is becoming structural. While discussing how the tools for the development of skills for entrepreneurship in the young population can be integrated into educational curricula, there has been a movement around youth associations for some time, which in Portugal has reached a significant level, enabling the development of these competences, without this fact being duly recognized in general.

Youth associations act as citizenship schools, where young people have opportunities to experiment, develop ideas and put into practice their solutions to everyday problems, being spaces for the development of a series of skills that are consistent with the development of entrepreneurship. In doing so, they are involved in the development of their communities and, at the same time, is given the opportunity to develop their personal, social and professional skills.

Participating in a youth association is a possible way to strengthen skills and tools, to gain awareness of the context in which young people are inserted and to commit to its development, while at the same time acquiring a series of technical–professional knowledge. Throughout the work, it is assumed that participation in a youth association enables young people to develop a series of skills and, consequently, to increase their entrepreneurial capacities.

In this way, it is crucial to understand the impact of youth associations on the development of youth entrepreneurship, verifying which dimensions it is associated with, as well as identifying the existing challenges and opportunities, in order to invest in the creation of young people’s skills.

This article reflects on the contribution of a specific associative movement, youth associations, in promoting entrepreneurship among its participants, young people. The study is based on a qualitative approach, through the study of comparative cases. Data for analysis was obtained from youth associations in mainland Portugal, using two methods of information collection, which work in a complementary way, document analysis and interviews. The organization and analysis of the collected data were carried out based on content analysis techniques.

The article is organized as follows. Section 2 is dedicated to exploring the interconnections of entrepreneurship and youth. Section 3 briefly describes materials and methods used in the empirical research. Section 4 presents and discusses the main findings. The article ends with a conclusion, highlighting key insights from the research.

SOME OF THE CONCLUSIONS
The development of spaces for the involvement of young people and for the development of their skills, with youth associations being a preferential means for this to become an increasingly possible reality, is central to the affirmation of engaged citizenry. Addressing the existing challenges and opportunities provided by youth organizations can be achieved by activating young people for participation through associativism, reinforcing the effectiveness of support programs and recognition of the merit and social impact of this movement. At a more concrete level, this may be achieved by creating and/or optimizing youth participation spaces such as youth councils, creating and implementing youth plans and projects directed to young people such as participatory budgets, youth parliaments and other related initiatives.

The socioeconomic crisis that youth is facing in Portugal is also present in other parts of Europe or even globally. This research was an opportunity to explore not only how important youth associations might be for young Portuguese in particular, but also suggest the significance and relevance for youth to engage in entrepreneurial activities in other parts of the world.

The full article is available HERE or as a download below.

To cite this article: António, N., & Pinto, H. (2022). Youth Associations and Entrepreneurship: Insights from Case Studies in Portugal. Merits, 2(2), 62-80.
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.3390/ merits2020007

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

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ARTICLE
Upshots of Intrinsic Traits on Social Entrepreneurship Intentions among Young Business Graduates

In this study they deliberated some personality traits that boost the intentions towards social entrepreneurships. These personality traits were LKM (loving-kindness meditation), compassion, and entrepreneurship resilience. These personality traits interacted with each other in this study to enhance social entrepreneurship intentions. It was proven that LKM motivated the persons towards social entrepreneurship with the help of their compassion quality, and this motivation will be at a high level if such a person also has the trait of entrepreneurship resilience. The most important thing that appeared is resilience, especially the personality trait of a persons who is able to cope with difficulties and able to find some creative solution in the case of problems/ difficulties/ failures of social entrepreneurship.

On the notion of “ethics of care” theory, our study also expressed that only those persons having LKM and a compassionate feeling, which are purely based on ethics of care, could be turned towards social entrepreneurship. The persons in a particular community that have the emotions of LKM and compassion, also have a thrill of solving the economic and social problems of others, which can satisfy and fulfil their desire by commencing social entrepreneurship; through this social entrepreneurship undertaking they can solve particular social and economic issues of their society and satisfy their emotions.

This study specifically addressed one of the biggest problem, the unemployment problem, for the government, it is suggested by this study that some incentives, reliefs, and tax exemptions may be formulated in such type of undertakings that comes under the jurisdictions of social entrepreneurship in order to enhance motivation among the communities towards social entrepreneurships, so that communities may solve their economic, financial, and social problems on their own rather than looking for government or other employers for employment opportunities.

However, one grave problem remains, majority of the students belong to poor families, which hardly afford their academic expenses just on the hope that after completing their education, they will get a good job and they will provide financial assistance to their families, and the student and their families do not have such financial resources to invest in social entrepreneurship. So, in this scenario, although the students have the LKM, compassionate emotions, and resilience traits, they cannot have social entrepreneurship intentions due to financial resources/capital constraints.

The full article is available HERE or as a download below.

To cite this article: Sana, H. A., Alkhalaf, S., Zulfiqar, S., Al-Rahmi, W. M., Al-Adwan, A. S., & AlSoud, A. R. (2021). Upshots of Intrinsic Traits on Social Entrepreneurship Intentions among Young Business Graduates: An Investigation through Moderated-Mediation Model. Sustainability, 13(9), 5192.
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095192

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

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RESEARCH
Rise Up: Understanding Youth Social Entrepreneurs and Their Ecosystems

In introducing Youth 2030, the UN strategy for supporting youth to turn their “ideas into action,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres acknowledged that

youth are “a vast source of innovation, ideas, and solutions” who are providing vital change and leadership on the global climate crisis, social justice, and technology

– (United Nations 2018)

As this UN initiative acknowledges, youth social entrepreneurs have great potential to lead positive change in the world today. This research contributes to understanding how to realize the potential and success of youth social entrepreneurs by identifying the support they need.

SOME OF THE FINDINGS

The authors explored the dynamic ecosystem, including key influencers, access to resources, and the youth social entrepreneur mindset that provide youth the opportunity to rise up to transform themselves, the world, and the future. Many features of this ecosystem are unique to youth social entrepreneurs. Because youth differ from adults with regard to their societal roles, power dynamics, propensity to engage in prosocial behaviors, outlook on life, and patterns of thinking, the

youth social entrepreneur ecosystem is distinct from the adult social entrepreneur ecosystem.

Perhaps this is most evident in the role influencers such as adult allies, peers, and parents, as well as resources such as access to technology and place, play in bridging the opportunity gap for youth social entrepreneurs. By exploring the experiences of established youth social entrepreneurs and building on the extant research, this research provides a framework for understanding how to enable the success of youth social entrepreneurs.

Indeed, there are those who view youth as lacking actionable ideas and requiring extensive instruction before becoming social entrepreneurs.

Yet as the research makes clear, youth have powerful ideas and can put those ideas into action to create positive change. Furthermore, some of the behavioral tendencies of youth that have been viewed through a negative lens—risk taking, challenging authority and status quo, and reward seeking—may help them to approach and pursue difficult societal challenges through social entrepreneurship.

As the Greek philosopher Plutarch noted, working with and supporting youth is not the filling of an empty pail, but rather the lighting of a fire (Sweeney 1968). In fact, the passion, fresh perspectives, and positive outlook of youth often spur them to take action to create social impact. So, what can adults do to fuel the fire in youth social entrepreneurs? Adult allies can help youth develop the personal agency to act on what they know, what they think, and what they feel. Many of our youth social entrepreneur partners credited parents or teachers with encouraging them.

This research with youth social entrepreneurs suggests that their faces and voices are diverse.

The youth social entrepreneurs they partnered with were from varied backgrounds and their work was motivated by a wealth of passion and purposes. Thus, parents, teachers, youth organizations, and other allies aiming to encourage youth to become social entrepreneurs should be open to a variety of models of what a youth social entrepreneur might “look like.” The fact is, all youth have the potential to create positive social change as long as we as a society bridge the opportunity gap by providing them with the ecosystem they need to fulfill their potential.

The full article is available HERE or as a download below.

To cite this article: Bublitz, M. G., Chaplin, L. N., Peracchio, L. A., Cermin, A. D., Dida, M., Escalas, J. E., … & Miller, E. G. (2021). Rise up: Understanding youth social entrepreneurs and their ecosystems. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 40(2), 206-225.
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1177/0743915620937702

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

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RESEARCH
The role of social entrepreneurship for youth purpose development

Despite the burgeoning research on social entrepreneurship in recent years, there is limited research on youths as a context for theorizing. This article examines the influence of social entrepreneurship on youth development through the positive youth development perspective. It explores how youth participation in social entrepreneurial activities helps develop their sense of purpose in life. Using data from semi-structured interviews with 27 youths and participant observations, this article demonstrated that social entrepreneurship contributes to youth purpose development by facilitating social conscience, prosocial connectedness, capability and personal agency development and how these manifest in different stages of youth purpose commitment.

SOME OF THE FINDINGS

This article makes three novel contributions to the SE literature. First, this article offers a process model of how SE participation can lead to the positive youth development through building youths’ positive purposes. The process model well summarized the stages in which the purpose development of the youths can be fostered by SE participation. Specifically, this article highlights that through facilitating youth activism, promoting civic participation, cultivating sense of belonging, building skills and competences, and nurturing personal agency, SEs enable several major processes of youth purpose development, including initiating, sustaining, escalating, and evolving commitment towards what the youths aim to achieve over time. This highlights a multi-functional aspect of SEs, which is not well documented in existing SE research, and shows how SE could play different roles in fostering youth purpose development at different stages.

This study implies the importance of collaboration between SEs and schools or universities. Such collaboration can assist the growth of the local SE sector through a pool of purpose-driven youths as valuable resources. Therefore, developing youths’ sense of purpose is not the holy grail of SE alone but it can also help spur the rise of positive minded youth leaders to support the growth of SE sustainably.

GAPS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

While this article shed some light on the roles of the SE in developing youths’ life purpose, it is not without limitations. First, this article focused on positive youths alone, which constitutes a small population of the youths participating in SEs. Future studies can examine the development of other types of youths within the SE settings, such as those who flunked out of SEs for whatever reasons they may be, as well as those who might develop negative experiences with SEs. Second, more research is needed to examine how relevant stakeholders of SEs such as funders (private or public), the policy makers, and colleagues or team members, may exert influence on the purpose development of youths.

Future research may also adopt hypothetico-deductive research to evaluate the efficacy of SE interventions on youths (e.g. SE activity with or without pay; SE as a graded activity in students’ GPA or merely an extracurricular activity; SE curriculum with stronger emphasis on social value versus entrepreneurial skills) and characteristics (e.g. SE being located school/campus or outside, full time or part-time involvement in SE).

The full article is available HERE or as a download below.

To cite this article: Dalphine Ong , Liang Shang , Yanto Chandra , Mashitah Hamidi & Haris Abd
Wahab (2020): The role of social entrepreneurship for youth purpose development, Journal of
Asian Public Policy
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17516234.2020.1815274

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

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GUIDEBOOK
Social business roadmap

The Social Business Roadmap has the aim to support young people in creating a social enterprise in 10 simple steps. It is an entrepreneurial guide tool for helping young people to make their first step in the social business world, as it’s easy to get lost on the entrepreneurial route, thus this small guide could be used as a road map.

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This guide provides some information about the social business world, the opportunities and the next steps. The Social Business Roadmap, as a non-formal educational tool, contains the necessary information, helpful instructions, and available support that will support a particular action or process regarding self-employability in social entrepreneurship. Therefore, this tool will be the appropriate instrument for any young person who wants to acquire the necessary support and empowerment for planning, launching, managing, and growing a successful social enterprise.

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ONLINE COURSES
HP Life online skills-training program

HP LIFE is a free, skills-training program for entrepreneurs, business owners, and lifelong learners all over the world. These free online training courses are designed to help entrepreneurs learn what they need to know to establish and grow a business. Besides a variety of extremely useful topics, one of the courses is specifically dedicated to social entrepreneurship.

HP LIFE is a global training program available both online and offline via Learning Equality’s Kolibri platform. It gives people all over the world the opportunity to build skills for the future— whether they want to start or grow their own business, enter the workforce or secure a better job—by providing access to free, accessible IT and business skills training courses. It is also an adaptable educational resource used on the ground by trainers, educators, and mentors to enrich curricula, support business creation, and improve employability skills. This is a program of the HP Foundation.

Empowering Everyone, Everywhere to Learn the Skills They Need for a Successful Future

ABOUT THE COURSES
HP collaborates with partners and experts around the world to create highly relevant, business-focused courses that are free to use for everyone, everywhere. The 32+ self-paced courses are modular, interactive, and full of information and practical exercises that enable you to develop the skills you need for a successful future, at a time and place that suits you. Courses are available in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, English, French, Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Besides many other, some of the course titles include: Social Entrepreneurship, Social Media Marketing, Design Thinking, Selling Online, etc.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

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IMPACT MANAGEMENT TOOLBOX
For the organisations working with the youth

This toolbox helps organizations and organizers to plan, implement and communicate the positive changes that they aim to create with their initiative or organisation in the lives of young people. It has been designed to help to do, measure, improve their activities… and repeat! In other words – to be able to create a more positive impact. Besides providing more clarity and increasing efficiency, it will help to involve the core project/activity team and explain the work outside the organisation, too. In conclusion, the toolbox help in creating a lasting legacy.

ABOUT THE TOOLBOX

What? A combination of nine tools especially developed for planning, measuring and increasing positive impacts of the organisations and reducing any negative effects of their activities.
For whom? For you. If you are active in an organisation that works with and for the young people. For example, youth associations aiming to develop their members or social enterprises providing services to youngsters.
What if I don’t work with young people? The tools will be absolutely suitable for designing and measuring the impact of your activities too! However, all the examples in this toolbox are related to young people as they are the main target
group here.

With the help of this toolbox, you can be even more successful in your activities! If you are reading this, you are probably active in an organisation that aims to create a positive impact in the lives of young people. Perhaps you want to unleash the creative potential of youngsters… or help young people who have had lesser opportunities compared with their peers…. or provide valuable knowledge and skills to the members of a youth organisation.

The document includes following methods: problem tree / goal tree / stakeholder map / beneficiary journey map / theory of change / impact indicators list / research methods list / measurement plan / organisational model canvas

The toolbox has been developed by the top organisations developing social impact measurement, youth field
and social entrepreneurship in the Baltic States. For more information about the project, click here.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

GUIDELINES
Social impact communication in youth organisations and youth social enterprises

Within the project BALTIC: YOUTH: IMPACT, the Latvian Social Entrepreneurship Association together with the Baltic partners has developed Social Impact Communication Guidelines. The goal of social impact communication is to increase and scale the positive social and environmental impact. These guidelines aim to create support instruments to help employees or volunteers in youth organisations or social enterprises to communicate their social impact in an understandable, inexpensive way, thus supporting efforts towards quality and better work of youth organisations. The guidelines will help to understand, how to organise internal and external communication and how to choose the communication message.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF COMMUNICATING YOUR SOCIAL IMPACT?
Sometimes you may wonder whether the time dedicated to communicating your impact is worthwhile or maybe you have a
question, to whom you should communicate your impact. Or why do you need to invest resources to build this communication? The answer is – because the impact communication benefits an organisation in many ways.

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These guidelines will serve you as an inspiration on how to communicate the social impact of your organisation or project to both internal and external audiences. If you still have doubts after reading the guidelines or you think your organisation is too small and does not have enough resources to create your social impact communication strategy, do not be afraid to start small.

It’s a good idea to start with simple steps like preparing and compiling data. By taking small steps you can gradually grow bigger and achieve great things – the more you talk about your organisation, the greater the chances of receiving more support and expanding the team in the future. The key is not to be afraid and start doing it. And you can start by checking out the guidelines below!

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

EaSI Technical Assistance for social enterprise finance

Social enterprises contribute to the European policy in the area of employment and social inclusion and are particularly relevant for the implementation of the rights and principles expressed in the European Pillar for Social Rights.

The European Commission recognised the potential of social enterprises for innovation and their positive impact on the economy and society at large in its Social Business Initiative and Start-up and Scale-up Initiative. Within this context, lack of or poor access to finance was identified as one of the most significant barriers to the creation and development of social enterprises.

To this end, several financial instruments have been launched within the EaSI programme and the European Fund for Strategic Investments. In addition, EaSI technical assistance – which previously addressed only microcredit providers – has been extended to cover also targeted support to social enterprise finance intermediaries.

A consortium of service providers performs these technical assistance support services, on behalf of the European Commission. The lead partner of the consortium is the European Center for Social Finance at the Munich Business School. Services will be provided in collaboration with a network of around 25 established experts from the field.

Therefore, if you are funding or planning to fund social enterprises, you might be eligible for valuable technical assistance services.

What is in it for you?

Social enterprise finance intermediaries wishing to improve relevant aspects of their operations, performance and governance can apply for technical assistance with a view to boosting their institutional capacity. The aim is to select organisations that are in most need of support from EaSI Technical Assistance, ensuring a balanced geographical representation.

The social enterprise finance intermediaries targeted by the technical assistance services comprise:

social enterprise finance providers (such as banks, public and private investment funds, fund-of-funds or (co-) investment schemes)
impact investors keen to address in the future the market segment of the EaSI Guarantee for social enterprises (i.e. investments of up to €500,000)
social enterprise support organisations (such as incubators, accelerators) that offer accompanying financial support
social enterprise support organisations (such as incubators, accelerators) that are in the process of widening their scope with a view to providing accompanying financial support to social enterprises.

These technical assistance services focus on capacity building and cover analysis, training in designing suitable financial instruments, applying suitable tools and ensuring quality, mutual learning and exchange of good practice, networking and partnering, monitoring and evaluation.

What services are on offer?

More detailed information is available HERE.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Campus StarterKit for developing Social entrepreneurship

When combined with the educator’s passion, expertise, and leadership skills, social entrepreneurship has the potential to engage students in any field of study to apply their knowledge and skills to address society’s most pressing problems.

University-based social entrepreneurship programs also create capacity for faculty and staff to develop skills, ideas, and the integrative modes of thinking that lead to successful innovation. The Campus Starter Kit is designed to help higher education leaders build hubs of social innovation by tapping into the creativity and ingenuity of the campus community.

While every campus is unique in its institutional identity and culture, educational vision, and student body, we hope to provide broadly applicable resources to help foster awareness and support for social entrepreneurship and changemaking.

We offer the Starter Kit in conjunction with the following tools, which are available on the Ashoka U website at ashokau.org:

• Making the Case for Social Entrepreneurship Presentation: customizable presentation for staff or faculty to engage their institution on the concept of social entrepreneurship.

• Social Entrepreneurship 101 Presentation: customizable presentation for use in class or at events raising awareness around social entrepreneurship on campus and in the community.

• Social Entrepreneurship Education Resource Handbook: resource guide and directory for social entrepreneurship in higher education including a comprehensive listing of social entrepreneurship programs, initiatives, competitions, conferences, and more.

• Teaching Resource Guide: guidebook for teaching courses on social entrepreneurship with sample syllabi.

As you make use of the Campus Starter Kit, please feel free to customize and re-design these tools to maximize results. Our goal at the Sullivan Foundation and Ashoka U is to grow social entrepreneurship and changemaking throughout the campus culture, transforming the educational experience into a world-changing experience.

Full document is available HERE.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Empowering Everyone, Everywhere to Learn the Skills They Need for a Successful Future

What is in it for you?

What services are on offer?

We’d Love To Hear From You!