RE-START EUROPE

What do you want to achieve by implementing the project? What are the objectives of your project?

Nowadays, entrepreneurship is getting more and more popular among young people. There are several reasons for that: personal reasons, high costs of education, the lack of education programs for socially and economically deprived individuals, a lot of young individuals don’t have a possibility for education. On the other hand, a lot of young individuals is over educated based on the needs of the employment market, which leads to unemployment of highly educated youth. They don’t get employed in the same way as they did in the past, they are more likely to create something of their own and like to be independent when it comes to their work. They like to discover new things and research. Because of the aftermath of the coronavirus, economic crisis and recession in Europe, young people have to face the problem of unemployment. For that reason, young individuals of POMAJU organization decided to connect with other youth in Europe within our RE-START EUROPE youth exchange, where participants will be able to gain experiences in the field of entrepreneurship, how to recover from the coronavirus, look for solutions, learn marketing basics through informal learning, gain experiences on how to use their potential and market it successfully.

Goals of the RE-START EUROPE project are:

- Gain knowledge on entrepreneurship and online companies;

- Get to know basics, entrepreneurship process, business plan on entrepreneurship for youth;

- Find out what is the internet’s impact on the entrepreneurship business;

- Research how successful are businesses that are run by young individuals;

- Make a website for this project;

- Take a look at the supporting system for encouraging entrepreneurship of youth (participants will get in contact with different local businesses, meet the local entrepreneurs, get new ideas, look at good practice examples …);

- Business plan preparation (online promotion, marketing and selling of products);

- Developing business ideas against the COVID-19 virus;

- Based on practices from other countries, we will research, how they encourage entrepreneurship of young people. We will try to find solutions and learn some things from other countries;

- Research the impact of COVID-19 on entrepreneurship, freelancers and economy in every country;

- Learn the basics of marketing through informal learning and gain knowledge on how to use our potential and market it successfully;

- Encouragement of intercultural dialog, building and strengthening European identity and values among youth;

- Increase awareness about other Erasmus+ projects and other opportunities young people have, encourage them towards continuing education, be active citizens …

Participants of the RE-START EUROPE youth exchange will research entrepreneurship all across the countries that will participate, we will try to find ways on how to recover from the coronavirus, we will discover different good practices examples all across Europe and try to solve unemployment issue of youth in Europe. Through different activities, we will learn how we can turn our hobbies, strengths and turn, upgrade them into a great business idea, which will lead to our possible self-employment.

What activities do you plan to implement? What is the number and profile of the participants involved?

For the project's main activity, we selected 9-day youth exchange in the Municipality of Murska Sobota. The youth exchange will take place hopefully in 2021 in the municipality of Murska Sobota. It will be attended by young people between the ages of 18 and 30, with the exception of a few youth leaders who are over 30 years old. The participants will be from 6 different countries - Slovenia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, Spain and Greece. There will be 6 participants from each country (5 + 1 youth leader), so there will be 36 participants in total. Among participants will also be those with fewer opportunities, from each country two participants, who are facing geographical, social and/or economic barriers. The exchange will involve young people with different backgrounds, those who have previously participated in Erasmus+ projects as well as those who are involved for the first time in such project. A group of participants is diverse in gender (male and female), age (younger and older youngsters), status (students, unemployed and employed) and has different experiences with precarious work. We will focus on examples of good practices that each country will present. Working methods include Icebreaker games, Energisers, Team/teamwork, interactive and creative workshops, "open space" workshops, debates, reflections, role-playing games, informal gatherings, etc.

What results and impact do you expect your project to have?

The aim is that by participating in the project, young people will gain and learn the basics of entrepreneurship, online entrepreneurship, marketing and develop entrepreneurial ideas. Young participants will learn about the state of entrepreneurship in Europe through the COVID-19 virus and think about the causes and find solutions to this problem. We will improve our foreign language skills (especially English), adapt to a new environment, accept responsibility, share tasks, find ways to maximize mutual cooperation, train in teamwork, which is a very important competence in today's world. At the end of the exchange, each group (country) will prepare a report on the exchange and share their experience and knowledge upon arrival home. By participating in the project, we will develop a more active attitude in society, while at the same time we will be more motivated to participate actively in other Erasmus+ projects.