What was all about?

Green Entrepreneurship as an Opportunity for Youth is 21 months project with Slovenia, Indonesia, Portugal, Ghana, Argentina and Nepal. It will take place from 1st of September 2016 until 1st of June 2018.

The project deals with two problems, which we want to combine and solve it simultaneously. First problem is about unemployment. This problem is even more alarming within young population and is present almost all around the world. We are solving it with promotion of entrepreneurship among youth.

Second problem deals with environment issues. The Earth is getting more and more polluted and is never to much of effort to protect our environment to have opportunities to grow and raise our families in healthy environment. This problem we are solving with applying green technologies and environmental friendly business ideas and social responsibility.

If we combine both problems together we get “green jobs”. We are going to implement series of activities, where we will train young people how to be creative, especially in very fast growing economic field, GREEN ENTREPRISES, which uses environmental friendly techniques for successful business.

What have we done?

During 21 months we had first preparatory meeting in Portugal followed by Training Course in Slovenia, Youth exchange in Indonesia, conferences in Nepal and Ghana and it ends with evaluation meeting again in Slovenia.

On those larger event we trained youth workers to deal and to moderate local activities and workshops. Meanwhile every organization prepared several workshops in cooperation with school and local private companies.

One of the important result is also Web portal, which supports our ideas and provide larger dissemination. We published a manual for NGO, developed some videos and produced one 30 minutes documentary movie. All the materials are published in all participating languages.

Also we created a tool to attract more young people with application-game where players simulate and measure their environmental awareness connected with entrepreneurship. We crearted a board game to raise environmental awareness.

We have created a website where we post during the project over 120 articles, 15 interviews and all the results of the project.

Ther project consisted from several international activities supported with local activities and on­ line based activities and web projects.

Each country organized one international activity. We had 2 mobility activities; Mobility for Youth Workers and Youth Exchange. Also we organized 2 conferences, one Kick-Off Meeting and Evaluation Meeting.

All results of the project are developed to be sustainable. We made a plan, that each country will publish at least one article on our web page according the topic and that we will regularly update our game and web page. Web page and game are developed in a way that they do not require special knowledge and can be upgraded with basic computer skills.

At the end of the project participants and partner organisations learned that cooperation across the planet contributes greatly to global learning, tolerance and mutual understanding.

Allpartner organizations come from another continent with very different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Because of these differences, each partner has a different approach to work and task execution. So we learned a lot and found that by continuing to work together, we can involve more people in this international learning.

Local activities

Each organization organized several local activities. With the project at the local level, we wanted to connect young individuals with advanced companies that are aware of modern global sustainable challenges and opportunities and the need for intergenerational cooperation, promote green jobs that are key to sustainable development, respond to global challenges of environmental protection, economic development and social inclusion.

All partners with cooperation with local schools and businesses implemented workshops. During these workshops young people deal with a variety of examples of successful and unsuccessful businesses with an experienced local entrepreneur. At the same time this were workshops on marketing, the importance of international integration, financial planning, finding funding and investors use online tools in business, etc. Young participants will in such way connect with entrepreneurs and create sustainable cooperation of young and experienced entrepreneurs. We focused on the theme of green technologies and sustainable tourism.

We were also looking for viable green solutions for companies (products and services), which will at the same time help achieve the goals of global sustainable development (SDG17) as soon as possible, the Paris Climate Agreement (1.5 C temperature reduction) and the EU green agreement for sustainable economic growth (climate neutrality by 2050), to form a community interested in green and smart solutions for more advanced countries.

Young people are already driving change around the world. We need to provide them with opportunities to acquire new knowledge and skills. A green future must start with listening to young people, integrating their innovation and creativity, and working together for a green recovery.

We want to encourage young people to find fresh, sustainable ideas and solutions that would help companies to:

  • operate more sustainably from an environmental, social and economic point of view,
  • more prepared for upcoming trends,
  • more resilient to impending crises,
  • make it easier to anticipate the direction in which society’s needs for more sustainable products and services are evolving,
  • perceive new business sustainable opportunities,
  • have a competitive advantage with sustainable solutions,
  • create new green jobs.

And the Future?

Results of the project are intended mainly for achieving a sustainable impact of the project. Through a series of international activities (training/exchange/seminars) we educated and trained individuals who will disseminate gained knowledge and ensure the sustainable impact of the project.

We believe we have very good strategy to involve private sector to actively participate in the project, especially after the project.

On the project we made specific follow-up plan and future cooperation plan. The implementation of the plan requires financial resources, which will be obtained in the following way:

  • we will use several financing instruments. From DEAR, EIDHR – EUROPEAN INSTRUMENT FOR DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHT, ERASMUS PLUs, EUROPE FOR CITIZENS, CREATIVE EUROPE, ERDF – URBAN INNOVATIVE ACTIONS, EUROPEAN YOUTH FOUNDATION, INTRA-AFRICA ACADEMIC MOBILITY SCHEME and others.