One Step Ahead Erasmus Project

Project Title

One Step Ahead

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 : Capacity Building for youth in neighbouring and enlargement countries

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics:

Project Summary

“One Step Ahead” was a cross-national initiative designed to promote social entrepreneurship as a way for empowering youth at risk. Our aim was to increase professional capacities of participating organizations and individuals by developing and giving them access to educational tools and methodological approaches allowing them to open up social enterprises that would contribute to sustainable development of their local communities. One of the main reasons this project was developed was the need to explore connections between promoting entrepreneurial activities and empowering young people with fewer opportunities. The above-mentioned need, explicitly expressed by all the partners involved. Both governmental and non-governmental institutions try to come up with effective solutions to help the unprecedented number of young people permanently excluded from the labor market. One of the most efficient strategies is empowering youngsters to create their own work places, hence, we found it crucial to promote entrepreneurial education. The problem we had identified during the pre-project research was that many youth workers did not have enough knowledge on how SE can be beneficial for their communities. And even if they did have proper theoretical background, they certainly lack proper tools to teach SE to young people. Therefore through this project we developed comprehensive tool kit that can be used for spreading entrepreneurial skills among young people, increasing their competences and empowering them to become change-makers in their local communities. There were two major needs stemming from this: firstly, we involved young people during the very process of the tool-kit creation so that it was ensured it suited their real needs and, secondly, to provide those young people in question with a comprehensive training that would allow them to open up their own social enterprises. This proposal was consistent with European policies, in particular with the EC objectives concerning youth. By equipping youth workers with tools to address issues important for their beneficiaries, the project fostered quality improvements in youth work. The main aim of the project was to promote social entrepreneurship as a way for empowering young people with fewer opportunities and preventing them from permanent social exclusion and permanent unemployment. The specific objectives of this project were based on throughout research of the needs of participating organizations and future target groups and defined as follows: 1. Raising the capacities of NGOs and youth workers; 2. Exploring new educational approaches on the topic and developing, testing and disseminating innovative educational curricula (in a form of a ready-to-use tool kit) on how to teach social entrepreneurship to young people that could be used in both formal and non-formal educational settings; 3. Giving youth workers and young people practical tools as well as long-term structured support and mentoring to enable them to plan, open and run social enterprises that bring sustainable and long-term impact to the local communities they work in; 4. Opening up at least social entrepreneurship run by young people per participating country; 5. Exchanging best practices and creating a sustainable operational network of European SE promoters who focus on empowering young people through equipping them with entrepreneurial skills; 6. Promoting SE on cross-sectoral level, especially through developing policy recommendations to be delivered to relevant stakeholders.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 85414,29 Eur

Project Coordinator

KAVKASIIS AKHALGAZRDULI KAVSHIRI & Country: GE

Project Partners

• YOUTH POWER/UNG KRAFT
• ASOCIATIA OBSTEASCA INVENTO
• FUNDACJA AUTOKREACJA