Social Growth on Trafficking and Immigration Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social Growth on Trafficking and Immigration

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Integration of refugees; Inclusion – equity; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

SOGTIM – Social Growth on Trafficking and Immigration is a training and incubation platform for existing and future sustainable nonprofits and prospective social entrepreneurs in acquiring the required 21st century skills for the development of innovative, technologically advanced, financially sound, globally competitive and actively networked entrepreneurship ventures that address the issues of immigration and human trafficking crisis in Europe.

We managed to have a wide dissemination of the platform worldwide, as of today over 100 participants have registered to the platform from the world over, crossing the borders the borders of the 6 countries where the members of this consortia are located.

Overt thirty million people are trapped in modern slavery, mostly women and children (Global Slavery Index, May 2016). Every minute, two people are being enslaved around the world. Two thirds are subjugated in the sex industry and one third into forced labor, mainly in the nonprofit and social enterprise industry dealing with immigrants and victims of human trafficking. Of them, only 1% are being rescued, and of this 1%, the 80% are being re-trafficked due to financial vulnerability. Romanians’ free international mobility encouraged slavery among a wide variety of forms and via black chains; in 2014 875 trafficking cases were recorded and 70% of Romanian immigrants said that they dream to return home (USA Embassy, Romania, 2015).

In 2016 148,355 migrants and refugees entered Europe (March 2016). The cumulative arrivals to Greece stands at 144,899. While in 2015 1,046,599 migrants arrived to Europe, Greece received 858,608 of them (Mediterranean Update, IOM, January 2016).

SOGTIM’s objective is to provide an experimental pedagogical program for the training of nonprofits and prospective social entrepreneurs in the skills, knowledge and networking needed to augment their chances of success without having them to rely on government handouts and support from donors an aspect which will resultantly lead to a ripple effect of benefitting the more disadvantaged in their communities.

It also offers an incubation e-based program that supports nonprofits and prospective social entrepreneurs on a step by step approach in building and growing their ventures. They interact and co-create with peers from the global community that go through the same process. Through SoG-TIM channels and activities they will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to social investors and exploit the opportunities of collaborating with start-uppers from the for-profit technologically advanced ecosystem.

The SOGTIM training platform has been designed based on the results of an extensive research addressed to the European nonprofit and social entrepreneurship sectors. This research helped us to identify the skills, strategies and competences that nonprofits and social entrepreneurs need in order to become innovators and change makers in their areas of operation.

The programme elements consist of the:
Active Project of the Participants
Two SOGTIM handbooks and self-administered exercise books
E-learning platform with six E-modules and online courses.
26 Best Practice cases of collaborative non-profits and social enterprises.
Action learning sets.
A Six month Mentoring Cycle
Two face-to-face Workshops in 6 countries
Peer to peer support platform on SOGTIM channels
SOG-TIM Competition and Award ceremony.

The SOGTIM project’s partners are seven organizations from different EU countries:
1. Pedal Consulting s.r.o from Slovakia
2. The Nest Social Cooperative Enterprise from Greece
3. Make A Cube from Italy
4. Eolas S.L. from Spain
5. Universitatea Lucian Blaga Din Sibiu (ULBS) from Romania
6. Spoleczna Akademia Nauk (SAN) from Poland

-The Leader Organization is PEDAL Consulting s.r.o. Pedal is private Slovak consultancy specializing in entrepreneurship and business development through all its phases.

-The Nest is the Hellenic Centre on Social Entrepreneurship & Social Innovation with official branches in Athens and Alexandroupoli (North Greece).

-Make A Cube is s a joint venture between Avanzi (80%) and Make a Change (20%). Avanzi is a leading think tank and consulting firm working on sustainable development issues since its foundation.

-EOLAS S.L. is founded by a team of professionals with more than 15 years of experience in idea generation, business development and innovation.

-SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK (University of Social Sciences) is one of the leading private universities in Poland having 20,000 students and over 1,000 academic staff. Based in the city with a long history of textile industry.

-Universitatea Lucian Blaga Din Sibiu (ULBS). “Lucian Blaga” is a public institution of higher education in Sibiu. It has in its nine faculties and more distance education centers in different cities. It has a student population of 16,562.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 246525 Eur

Project Coordinator

PEDAL CONSULTING SRO & Country: SK

Project Partners

• The Nest Social Cooperative Enterprise
• Make a cube srl
• EOLAS S.L.
• UNIVERSITATEA LUCIAN BLAGA DIN SIBIU
• SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK