SE+ED: Social Entrepreneurship and Educational Practices for Young People

On the 11th of September, at the Auditorium of the Museu of Portimão, DYPALL Network, partnering with the Municipality of Portimão and Cooperative ECOS, hosted the International Conference “SE+ED – Social Entrepreneurship and Educational Practices for Young People”.

In this gathering the participants had a chance to learn about the importance of the social entrepreneurship in the modern economy and its special relevance in the post crisis economy. Moreover this conference was used as a platform for sharing the perspectives of social entrepreneurship in different countries. It was discussed and analyzed the perspective for development and the challenges that this form of entrepreneurship faces through the effected stakeholders. We tackled the issues of collaboration between traditional business sector and the growing start up sector, and how this link can be improved.

This conference was the final activity of a one year project of the same name: SE+ED – Social Entrepreneurship and Educational Practices for Young People, supported by the Erasmus+ programme, which had the aim of providing a methodological and educational training on social entrepreneurship. Twenty five young people, from Greece, Poland, Austria and Portugal benefited from these activities based on exchange and non-formal learning methods.

In this project, the participants undertook an intensive training by experienced voices in this field and they had a forum in which they shared their knowledge and experience which they brought from their countries. The activities and programs were uploaded for future use in the website of the project (https://www.seed-uom.org/). Throughout the conference there was a focus on creating a working atmosphere with strong sense of community and international spirit.  The conference was concluded with proper evaluation which can give us a pathway for improvement for future projects of this kind.

This event brought together social entrepreneurs, academic experts and students from Portugal, Poland, Austria and Greece, and allowed them to explore different options on how social entrepreneurship can be promoted among young people, at the community level, as well as national level.

The outcomes of the project, highlighted within the conference, were the exchange of best practices, but also recommendations that would better enable municipalities to take a closer look at social entrepreneurship, and thus better support citizens and young people in particular, to start their own initiatives and becoming more active in finding solutions to their communities.

All the activities of the project were developed in partnership with the University of Macedonia from Greece, Gain and Sustain from Austria, Uniwersytet Rzeszowski from Poland, ECOS from Portugal and the MBM Center for Training and Development from UK.

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