2014 / 2015 – The Change Makers 2: Sustainable Development through Entrepreneurship Education

In accordance with the general objectives of our organization to support the integration of young people into the society and to raise young people’s contribution to solving educational, environmental and social problems, CGE has devised a long-term strategy with the aim to implement a framework of complementary projects leading to the improvement of the level of young people’s key competences and skills important for their successful integration into the labor market and contribution to social cohesion. With all this in mind, we believe that the topic of unemployment should receive special attention considering its relation with all other social processes and the destabilising effect it can have on the society as a whole. The concepts of job security and long-term career planning no longer exist due to thorough social and economic changes.

Sustainable entrepreneurship education offers a solution: while a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, sustainopreneurs consider their community as a foundation for all actions, always keeping in mind that the process of their business development is closely tied to the process of community development thus creating social capital. Therefore, the main aim of sustainable entrepreneurship is to further advance economic prosperity through environmental protection and awareness and social justice. Sustainopreneurs are commonly associated with the voluntary and the not-for-profit sectors, and with this in mind, the planned TC will have a connecting role, supporting the fight against youth unemployment sustainably on one side and on the other side solving various social problems in order to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable growth in the local community.

The aim of the TC is to gather youth workers, staff from youth centers, help and information centers as well as youth representatives from business incubators to exchange their experiences, gain new knowledge and skills in the fields of sustainable development, entrepreneurship, education and empowerment of youth, to further develop strategies in fostering creative, independent and non-traditional ways of thinking and acting in their local environments. In order to provide a deeper understanding of sustainable development, entrepreneurship and empowerment of youth and to broaden their perspective on achieving organizational and social goals, the participants will be able:

The participants will:

In order to reach these goals, the TC will focus first on the capacity building of young people involved, as a kind of foundation for the activities to come. As a next stage, the activities will be focused on sustainable development, involving its fundamentals, current strategies and trends as well as best practice examples. In the next stage, the activities will focus on entrepreneurship skills, their development and the exchange of best practice examples. All this is creating a framework of necessary knowledge and skills needed for development of future ideas and projects which will be implemented in the follow-up activities, creating long-term impact and strengthening the results of the TC as promoting the level of young people’s social inclusion and well-being in General and improving the level of key competences and skills necessary for their successful integration into the labour market, in the Long run contributing to solving the issue of youth unemployment.

The project is supported  by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.