SMEs Innovation and Youth Entrepreneurship for Sustainability

The issues and needs:

Social entrepreneurship and the social/solidarity economy are growing areas of interest and activity with varying interpretations across partners countries. The European Commission and OPAD (Organization for Poverty Alleviation & Development) have identified this sector as a key area of growth that has the potential to solve many of the challenges faced across world and particularly youths unemployment and the poverty syndrone. To enable young people to engage in the social and solidarity sector we need more organisations supporting young people to obtain the necessary skills and competences to deliver entrepreneurial training/activities.

Recently we conducted a number of consultations with young people who have participated in our previous projects looking at youth entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, including planning meetings and surveys. The main findings were that:

Young people felt they lacked fundamental business skills, often this was linked to a lack of self-confidence;

There was a poor…