youth – Social Enterprise Development in the Baltic Sea Region

SUSTAINABILITY
Handbook on greener habits for young adults

Cultivating greener habits always requires initiative – at home, in workplace or leisure time. To foster a sustainable mindset and engage communities more efficiently, within project “Greenminded” a curriculum for training, guidebook for trainers and an online course were created for young adults willing to learn about lasting change. How does one take initiative, and what things could be done at workplace to cut carbon footprint? And how to organize green initiatives for local communities? Take a look at the suggested approach for training in these outcomes:

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ABOUT THE PROJECT

During this project the focus is on engaging young adults on topics around environmental issues and active citizenship. As a result a wholesome learning pack was created, and it consists of a curriculum, training materials and an e-learning course in Moodle platform to be used by youth workers in their efforts towards building awareness about greener future and actions we individually can take to achieve it.

Financed by Nordplus Adult program, the project is carried out by Social Innovation Centre, Ziniu kodas and INVOLVED NGO.

20 Best Social Enterprise Blogs & Websites

The best Social Enterprise blog list curated from thousands of blogs on the web and ranked by traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness.

1. NextBillion

NextBillion.net is an open forum for discussion of social enterprise, poverty alleviation, and business development in emerging markets and beyond. Its goal is to stimulate discussion, raise awareness, and provide a platform for sharing ideas that improve the lives of the poor and reshape entire economies.

2. Causeartist | Social Impact Lifestyle Platform

Kansas City, Missouri, US
Causeartist is a global community and social enterprise platform, which covers brands, startups, and social entrepreneurs impacting the world through social enterprise. It features original interviews, lists, and spotlights with founders and CEOs from some of the most exciting Social Enterprises impacting the world. It is there to help you discover what’s new and trending in the world of Social Enterprise and Social Impact.

3. Devex | News

Devex is the media platform for the global development community. As a social enterprise, we connect and inform one million development, health, humanitarian, and sustainability professionals through news, business intelligence, and funding & career opportunities so you can do more good for more people.

4. Pioneers Post

UK
Through our stories, videos, podcasts, events, and partnerships and as a social enterprise ourselves we are committed to supporting, sharing, scrutinizing and celebrating the impact economy at every level, from entrepreneur to investor, to market builder and asset manager, across sectors and in every continent around the globe.

5. Social Change Central | Australia’s premier portal for social enterprise opportunities

Social Change Central (SCC) is Australia’s first dedicated online hub for social enterprises that connects, encourages, and supports social enterprises and aspiring entrepreneurs available in Australia and internationally. The vision is to enable social enterprises to thrive, resulting in widespread and transformative social change. Their mission is to support passion and ideas for social good into real social impact.

6. Social Enterprise Development in the Baltic Sea Region

The Network’s mission is to promote social entrepreneurship by developing integrated learning and sharing platform in the Nordic-Baltic area. Let’s make social innovation and collaboration happen, together.

7. Social Good Stuff

Social Good Stuff is full of Ideas, Resources, and Inspiration for Creating Positive Societal Impact. It aims to create the potential of individuals, technology, and collaboration to create a positive societal impact. The quality or state of being that is positive, optimistic, or constructive.

8. Acumen | Changing the Way the World Tackles Poverty

Acumen, a global nonprofit changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in sustainable businesses, leaders, and ideas. Our vision is a world based on dignity, where every human being has the same opportunity. Rather than giving philanthropy away, we invest it in companies and change-makers.

9. Pro Bono Australia

Australia
Pro Bono News is a news outlet for Australia’s social economy. We cover all sectors under the umbrella of the purpose economy, from charities and not for profits, to impact investing, philanthropy, volunteering, corporate social responsibility, and social enterprise.

10. B The Change

B the Change is a collaboration of B Lab, the community of Certified B Corps, and to inform and inspire people who have a passion for using business as a force for good in the world. We believe our work towards an inclusive and equitable economic system has never been more important. In the community, we will find resilience.

Full list of the Best Social Enterprise Blogs to be followed on 2022 you can find 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.

Social innovation VS Social Entrepreneurship

Welcome to the Social Innovation | Social Entrepreneurship section. This section will help you understand the fundamentals of Social Innovation | Social Entrepreneurship. This section is not intended to be exhaustive list about everything “social”, but rather to give an overall view of what we see in the space.

“Social innovation is the process of developing and deploying effective solutions to challenging and often systemic social and environmental issues in support of social progress […] Solutions often require the active collaboration of constituents across government, business, and the nonprofit world”
(Clavier et. al., Stanford Centre for Social Innovation)

Inspired by natural ecosystems, the Canadian Social Innovation Generation group believes that a healthy system must be resilient and adaptable. As such, social innovation arises from acknowledging the world in all its complexity and can be understood as “an alignment of circumstances that make action possible” (SiG, 2017).

SiG defines social innovation as: “a process, product or program that profoundly changes the way a given system operates, changing it in such a way that reduces the vulnerability of the people and the environment in that system. As a consequence of a positive social innovation, a system grows more resilient” (SiG, 2014).

Please read the full article HERE.

Mentorship program for Ukrainians in Vilnius

Let’s admit it – the best way to get to know a new city is with the help of a local. After all, if you’re staying for a longer period of time, you not only need to find a place to live – you also need to find a job, a kindergarten or school for your children, and a doctor as well. So the help of a local becomes invaluable. If you’re a Ukrainian who has come to the capital, you can meet your local friend in the BeFriend Vilnius mentoring programme – all you have to do is register and wait to be introduced to a volunteer. Your mentor will answer all your questions and help you with any problems that might come up.

For more information please visit the site directly HERE.

The complete guide to growing and scaling your social enterprise

We’ve learned a few things in helping support over 900 social enterprises around the world scale their operations with the help of our Experteers, Capacity Building Programs, research, and educational programming. Our work has touched early stage, award-winning enterprises long before they reached international acclaim, including groups like Inyenyeri, Sistema B, M-KOPA, Ubongo and BEMPU. At all stages in the social enterprise “pioneer gap”, we’ve been in the trenches with small, growing, and even large social enterprises. Along the way, we’ve scaled up our own award-winning social enterprise, too.

We’ve seen first hand what research continues to prove: Most social impact startups fall wildly short of their projections and end up going out business. The main reason? Social entrepreneurship is hard. Really hard. But there is another reason, too: founders, biased by their own egos and intuition, don’t take the time to truly embrace proven frameworks that will increase the odds of success.

Despite what you might think, there are no such things as visionary entrepreneurs. In fact, the number one reason that startups fail is because founders think they have an idea that will work, when in reality there is no market for it. This is why startup guidance is full of quotes like “fall in love with problems, not your solution”, “don’t become a technology in search of a problem” and “get out of the building”.

So how do you stack the odds in your favor when growing a social enterprise? Our guide below shares the most impactful frameworks and tools that you need to grow and scale your social enterprise. It’s still going to be a long, hard journey, but we’ve found that it helps to know that you’re not alone (even when it feels like you’re riding a lion).

Full guide is available HERE.

What are social enterprises?

A social enterprise is an operator in the social economy whose main objective is to have a social impact rather than make a profit for their owners or shareholders. It operates by providing goods and services for the market in an entrepreneurial and innovative fashion and uses its profits primarily to achieve social objectives. It is managed in an open and responsible manner and, in particular, involves employees, consumers and stakeholders affected by its commercial activities.

The Commission uses the term ‘social enterprise’ to cover the following types of business

Those for who the social or societal objective of the common good is the reason for the commercial activity, often in the form of a high level of social innovation

Those whose profits are mainly reinvested to achieve this social objective

Those where the method of organisation or the ownership system reflects the enterprise’s mission, using democratic or participatory principles or focusing on social justice

There is no single legal form for social enterprises. Many social enterprises operate in the form of social cooperatives Search for available translations of the preceding linkEN•••, some are registered as private companies limited by guarantee, some are mutual, and a lot of them are non-profit-distributing organisations like provident societies, associations, voluntary organisations, charities or foundations.

Despite their diversity, social enterprises mainly operate in the following 4 fields

Work integration – training and integration of people with disabilities and unemployed people

Personal social services – health, well-being and medical care, professional training, education, health services, childcare services, services for elderly people, or aid for disadvantaged people

Local development of disadvantaged areas – social enterprises in remote rural areas, neighbourhood development/rehabilitation schemes in urban areas, development aid and development cooperation with third countries

Other – including recycling, environmental protection, sports, arts, culture or historical preservation, science, research and innovation, consumer protection and amateur sports.

The social business initiative

The social business initiative (SBI), launched in 2011, aims to introduce a short-term action plan to support the development of social enterprises, key stakeholders in the social economy and social innovation. It also aims to prompt a debate on the avenues to be explored in the medium/long term. There are 11 priority measures, organised around 3 themes:

Initiated by the SBI, the Commission and the expert group on social entrepreneurship, established a 5 pillar strategy aimed at increased access to funding, access to markets, improved framework conditions, foster social innovation and continue to work on internationalisation. See more on the implementation of the 5 pillar strategy.

More information is available HERE.

Blog | Learn | Library

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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Photo by Duy Pham on Unsplash

Welcome to SE Network

SUSTAINABILITY
Handbook on greener habits for young adults