Have you ever had a great idea for a business but then you never started working on it?
Would you like to address a social problem in your local community but you didn’t know how to do it?
These were some of the questions that were solved during the “Sail with Social entrepreneurSHIP”, a Training course co-funded by the EU and Erasmus+ program in which 25 young Europeans participated.
During the week of the 4th-10th of April, the youngsters were involved in activities that were mainly focused on the idea of providing them tools and knowledge for them to be able to create and develop their ideas and start in the world of the social entrepreneurs.
In order to achieve this goal, they started by creating links among them. First playing some games to get to know each other better, then participating in a team building activity.
Once these initial steps were achieved, they started working on what it means Social Entrepreneurship and some fundamentals about Erasmus+ program.
The group of participants shared their perspectives, personal goals and their respective country information regarding entrepreneurship. With all of this in mind, they brainstormed new ideas for addressing social problems, they discussed which competences they needed and the trainers provided them with some key tools to fulfill their needs.
The time was passing really fast due to this funny way of learning and sharing ideas, so when the project was heading to the middle day of his schedule, it was time for visiting some successful Social Companies based in the city. There the participants learned by first hand how was the process of developing and pitching the ideas that those owners had, some difficulties that they faced and new ideas of how to approach your objective.
After gaining this new perspective of the topic, the young Europeans tasted the local gastronomy in a taberna, and had a great time visiting the beautiful city of Thessaloniki.
With the group really bonded, the participants headed to the final part of the program, in which they dived deeply into how to find ideas for your social business, how to successfully apply them, they learned new tools such as Canvas Business Model and then made some proposals for cooperation and ideas development.
With this new knowledge and gained skills, the participants said goodbye to this fantastic week with the promise of meeting again and maybe, working together developing their new ideas of business.
These kinds of projects not only offer a great opportunity for learning and exchanging cultural points of view, but it also helps us to grow as individuals.
For example, Fernando Cristóvao, our Portuguese participant, summarized his experience with: “In one word, I would describe this project as: wonderful. I arrived without any expectations and I left with a book written. Congratulations to the organization of the project and mainly to the trainers for the excellent quality of work.”
Even for local people, such as Giorgos, our Greek participant, this is a great opportunity for learning and gaining new skills:
“It was a great week, I met a lot of new people and learned how business can improve our society with the social component of it and I’m really grateful for it.”
Even for people who have never participated before in this kind of projects, it’s a great experience, such it was for Andrica, our participant coming from Romania: “InfinityGreece took care of my first Erasmus+ experience that for sure won’t be my last. The learning methods, intercultural nights and making connections all over the world, for sure it was an experience one can sometimes only dream of.”
So if you have never participated in this kind of projects, or either you did and you’re looking for more experiences like this, we recommend you to follow us on our social media and be alert so you might be the next participant joining these events!