Update on social entrepreneurship project

A Social Enterprise combines entrepreneurial activity with a social purpose.
Its main aim is to have a social impact.

“Sustain your life through social entrepreneurship” is an Erasmus + KA2 Strategic partnership project managed by PRISM and funded with the support of the European Union. It aims at equipping young people with the necessary knowledge and tools to activate a social enterprise
 

Officially the project started in January 2016 with the kick off meeting of the partners in Palermo. During the meeting they focused on contents and upcoming steps for implementation.

The month of July 2016 has been a crucial moment for the implementation of the project, two important steps of the above-mentioned project have been implemented:

- The first Training Course - an international training held in Caltanissetta, from the 6^th to the 10^th, where 28 young people from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Lithuania, and Netherlands worked side by side. The training whose title is "Turning needs into social start ups" was implemented by PRISM. It equipped participants with project management competencies and tools necessary to build a sustainable social enterprise. It focused on all phases of the Project Cycle Management linked to a holistic approach for nonviolent community development. Through a non-formal, intercultural and creative learning process, the combination of study visits of local social enterprises, the testimony of local entrepreneurs operating in the social field and group work (both practical and theoretical) it has been possible to transfer to participants the knowledge and practical tools to start up a social business, offering innovative solutions to identified local community’s needs.

- The Second transnational meeting in Las Palmas, Canary Islands (Spain) from the 14^th to the 15^th of July. The main focus of the transnational meeting was about the TC in Caltanissetta, the assessment tools to better evaluate the feedbacks of the participants, the organization of the next Training Courses and the preparation of the project outputs according to the TCs feedbacks. Moreover, the partnership had the opportunity to evaluate the work implemented so far and to set the next important steps of the project, also through a discussion on the internal evaluation and quality assurance of the project, on the results of the communication strategy and on the financial aspects of the project.

UPCOMING

The next training in Rotterdam from the 30th of October to the 5th of November 2016.

Keep up to date via our FB page - Sustain your life through Social Entrepreneurship

 
  

Here are some quotes from the participants of the TC in Caltanisetta, Italy:

“We all tried to collaborate and had the chance to share our experiences and knowledge about the social entrepreneurship phenomenon and its potential in the youth field and non-formal education in our own countries and also in Europe.”

“This project aims at the creation of a favourable environment to encourage and enable young people to pursue social entrepreneurship in their local communities. Entrepreneurship and self-employment could help young people to develop new key competences, respond to the emerging social needs and fully participate in society.”

“What I've learned from the Training Course in Caltanisetta is that with creativity you can find new ways for your entrepreneurship. What I've learned the most is that international contact can give you new ideas. In every country the will handle social needs in a different way. They gave me inspiration for starting new activities and to try to start a social centre in Surinam”.

Talking about social entrepreneurship

“We can let our experiences define us, or choose to define our experiences,” says Luke Rodgers, founder of Foster Focus, an organization that challenges the stigmas and labels assigned to children in care in the UK. 

As a care-leaver from the UK foster system, Luke understood a lot from a young age about a broken system. "I pledged to myself that I would dedicate my career to finding ways to give young people more positive outcomes.”

By founding Foster Focus, Luke transformed his experiences into valuable insights for foster care providers and children. Foster Focus challenges the stigmas and labels assigned to children in care that often prevent them from thriving in foster settings. The venture’s peer-to-peer program equips youth with tools to understand their experiences in a positive way. Through the programme, participants develop facilitation and speaking skills, eventually designing their own workshops to share what they’ve learned with their peers.

To address systems-level change, Foster Focus combined theory, policy, and the personal experiences of care-leavers to conduct trainings that help youth-serving institutions better advocate for children’s legal rights and more proactively include children’s voices in decision-making processes. The impact so far: increased awareness of children’s rights among foster agencies as well as over 1,000 youth in care reached through peer-led leadership trainings.

Luke Rodgers’ journey from foster care statistic to champion of systems change was filmed during Generation Now, an event hosted by IYF, Laureate International Universities, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). During the event, young social entrepreneurs from around the globe had the opportunity to share their innovative solutions addressing education, gender equality, youth engagement, and more.

In his story, Luke shared a staggering statistic. "Fifty percent of the UK’s homeless population are people who have left the foster care system." At age 15, Luke was part of that statistic. He slept on trains at night and went to school during the day. Today, he is a 2015 Laureate Global Fellow and recently named Entrepreneur of Excellence by the National Diversity Awards.

Before that, in 2013, he had already been awarded the Children's Achievement Award for his work developing ways to engage with young people in the UK and Europe, as well being awarded Young Social Entrepreneur of the year 2014 by Unltd.

Watch this video to hear Luke talk about Reframing the Narrative of Foster Children in the UK.

Interestingly, he observes : "the more I talked to social workers the less and less I wanted to be one".
To round off with the cherry on the cake: the juxtaposition of social worker's statements on a referral form  next to the real voice and perspective of the young person involved: an eye opener !