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New project to excel youth work and social entrepreneurship in municipalities

May 31, 2022 - News

To help young people thrive, we need cross-sector collaboration that provides opportunities for them to learn, explore and develop. Social entrepreneurship is one useful tool but in a local context it will work best hand-in-hand with other local actors. SE Forum joins four European partners in ERASMUS+ project to increase municipality collaboration with youth workers and young entrepreneurs.

At SE Forum, we see social entrepreneurship as an effective tool for reducing economic inequality, promoting social inclusion and integration, creating resilient societies, and fostering active participation within local communities. We also believe in the power of collaborations, as social enterprises do not exist in silos.

From previous work, we’ve learnt that municipalities could be strong partners for social enterprises being a driving force in their respective regions, setting the course of actions for their stakeholders. At the same time, we have lots of youth organisations and social enterprises whose energy and motivation bring new innovative ideas to improve the local context and who are creating the local impact much needed in municipalities.

However, we also see that social enterprises and municipalities aren’t always connected and that they are missing synergetic opportunities from possible partnerships. Social enterprises consider municipalities to be unreachable and municipalities do not find the right ways to connect with and support social innovation initiatives.

An ERASMUS+ initiative for youth collaboration

To encourage long-term sustainable cooperation between municipalities and social enterprises as well as youth organisations we’ve joined up with partners from Latvia (Social Entrepreneurship Association of Latvia), Cyprus (Synthesis), Lithuania (Geri Norai), and Portugal (Conexão Jovem) in the project ‘Enhancing youth capacity in municipalities and encouraging mutual cooperation using social entrepreneurship as a tool’ – ‘LOCAL-Y-MPACT’, a project funded by the European Commission’s ERASMUS+ programme.

To facilitate collaboration between social enterprises, community-based youth organisations and local municipalities we will help strengthen the capacity and skills of local municipalities to support and cooperate with social enterprises. Our international partners will provide various case studies for common learning on partnerships and building successful cooperation.

The project is an excellent opportunity to learn from and together with our European colleagues, to increase local cross-sector collaboration, and to improve social entrepreneurship and youth work. We’re excited to gather insights alongside our local partner Region Dalarna to provide better opportunities for young people, in Sweden and across Europe.

 

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