Grow Your Raw and Sustainable Organic Enterprise (Business Development, Branding and Investment Ready Program) Erasmus Project

Project Title

Grow Your Raw and Sustainable Organic Enterprise (Business Development, Branding and Investment Ready Program)

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The rationale behind the project Grow Your Raw and Sustainable Organic Enterprise ( Business Development, Branding and Investment Ready Program ) is laying in the extremely good achieved results with the first edition of the project named Raw&Grow ( www.rawandgrow.eu ) . The main idea behind this second edition is to expand the partnership to new startup community members in the country and also to provide new potential cooperation with 2 more European partners. However the goal of the project is through a strategic approach, highly participatory and engaging activities as well as through building the capacities of the participating institutions from 5 countries to empower adults to get into organic production businesses as well as to develop and accelerate their startup enterprises by bringing them closer to this sustainable model of production. In the same time, the idea is to jointly address the organic production and not only to inspire start-ups and entrepreneurs to embrace this concept, but also unemployed adults to consider it as a tool and response to their unemployment. In the previous edition of the project we enabled 8 startups from Macedonia (members of Impact Hub Skopje ) to explore same/similar enterprises in Slovenia and France. This new edition should provide chances for more startups (including staff and learners) from the participating countries to collaborate and to build their networks as well as to learn more about business development of organic enterprises, potential branding and available recurses in funding for growing and scaling their businesses.
The new edition of the Grow Your Raw and Sustainable Organic Enterprise would like to use the previous experience in innovation and knowledge sharing from the first edition of Raw and Grow project ( www.rawandgrow.eu) where our innovative approach made practical progress with-in three organizations partners and their staff members in organic productions. This new edition would use new innovative methods for practical learning, sharing know-how about organic production, and working with producers and experts to continually improve potentials, branding and investment readiness of the businesses. We are also piloting new ways of ensuring learners to obtain skills in setting bushinesses and learning about investment potentials.

Grow Your Raw and Sustainable Organic Enterprise ( Business Development, Branding and Investment Ready Program ) is fundamentally about bringing 8 adults from 5 countries to learn from each other and develop ideas, knowledge and innovative actions together. It aims to build bridges between theory and practice, in particular through practical innovation projects, bottom-up approaches, partnerships and networking activities. The project will synthesize experience and practical knowledge available about organic production and identify the best methodologies for exchanging this knowledge. In the same time the project would bring a possibilities for new learners to set up their business in organic field. Based on this, easily understandable training material will be developed. It will create a European network of adult participants to exchange experiences and discuss the advisory material developed by the project.

Furthermore, the innovativeness of the project lies in developing an startup business plan development for new comers ( learners- minimum 20) and advanced acceleration programme for organic production intended to adults learners and arranged according to their needs. This program will be developed in order to increase the business potentials for organic enterprises. Such an innovative programme will be strongly focused on the use of ITC methods ( developed by our Greek partner- http://ied.eu ) and tools in bringing organic production closer to the adults and in an adult-friendly language and it will incorporate the best practices developed. Moreover, such a programme is of a first kind in Macedonia, where the organic production has not been widely developed and is mostly an area of interest of young adults only. The project will pave the way to a strategic approach for exchanging best practices in startup organic world between entrepreneurs from France, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Greece and and Macedonia. Finally, the project will create an on-line platform accessible on the participation’s organization web-pages offering evidence-based advisory material as well as facilitating learner-to-learner learning.
The dissemination strategy will include:
– Web promotion (web-page): expected 5000 adults to be reached;
– Social media dissemination (Facebook): expected 1000 to be reached;
– Traditional media promotion (printed and broadcast media): expected 10 to be contacted;
– Internal organizational promotional strategy;
– Communication with partners and relevant stakeholders.
Project’s sustainability lies in its environmental impact and the healthy living it promotes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 56030 Eur

Project Coordinator

Impact Hub Skopje & Country: MK

Project Partners

• SKRIVNOSTNI OTOK DRUZBA ZA PODJETNISTVO IN SVETOVANJE DOO SO P
• GLAFKA s.r.o.
• New Deal Institut
• INSTITUTE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
• Evropska rozvojova agentura, s.r.o.