UPRISE – UNLEASHING THE POWER OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

UPRISE – UNLEASHING THE POWER OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP is the title of the training course financed by the Erasmus+ programme that took place last August in Bernati, a small Latvian town overlooking the Baltic Sea. The aim of the project organized by Inspiration by Motion Latvia, in which Eufemia association took part as a partner organization, was to raise awareness among young people about the role that social entrepreneurship can have as a useful tool to address refugee issues and other social problems. This training course was attended by 24 young people from Italy, Latvia, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, who during the 10 days of the project worked together on the topic led by 2 trainers. The working methods and activities carried out were based on non-formal learning methods and therefore included an approach to the topic based on role-plays, presentations and debates, activities that make the participant an active presence within the project.After the activities of the first day, aimed at getting to know each other better and sharing our fears and expectations and our contribution to the course, we entered the full range of activities: initially we were given some knowledge about entrepreneurship, what it is and what are its characteristics, since not everyone had the same level of knowledge about the subject, then we started to talk about social entrepreneurship trying to understand who is a social entrepreneur, what are the peculiarities of a social enterprise and how it differs from a normal business or a non-governmental organization.  In the following days, after learning the basic knowledge about social entrepreneurship, we were able to work independently to create an ideal social enterprise that would meet the requirements of trainers or solve social problems existing in our countries.  During the training course we also carried out activities that helped us to understand how to deal with and overcome negative thoughts or make potentially risky decisions and we had the opportunity to work in national teams and discuss with participants from other countries about situations such as the spread of entrepreneurial culture or employment rate in our countries, as well as participate in activities such as “NGO Bazaar”, during which we were able to get to know the organizations in other participating countries that took part in the project.  In our free time we had the opportunity to visit the nearby town of Liepaja and explore the nature around the campsite where we lived during the project.Taking part in this training course was a very enriching experience for me because we participants had the opportunity to carry out very well organized activities under the supervision of trainers capable of effectively transmitting their knowledge and because I had the opportunity to compare and learn from the experience of the other participants, spending with them quality time even outside the planned activities.

Alessandra