The Eastern Partnership Youth Conference 2018: “Youth for Entrepreneurship” will bring +130 participants – including 90 young entrepreneurs, in one place to develop new skills, ideas, and solutions to shared challenges. The Conference is organized by the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (EaP CSF)  with the support of the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2018 and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Regional Office “Dialogue Eastern Europe”.

The European Union promotes entrepreneurship as a key competence that can boost competitiveness and growth. As a result, entrepreneurship education is now being increasingly encouraged across the EU and in the EU Neighbourhood. Entrepreneurship and self-employment can be pathways for young people to emerge from unemployment and to positively impact their communities. However, young people often feel they lack the necessary skills and knowledge to start their own enterprise.

Eligibility

The Social Entrepreneurship Schools and Eastern Partnership Youth Conference are designed for young people who:

• are between 18 and 30 years old
• have an entrepreneurial idea and are interested in establishing a social enterprise;
• have between 6 and 24 months of experience working in the field of social entrepreneurship;
• are citizens of the European Union, Russia or Turkey;
• want to tackle a social problem/s in their local community/town/country;
• are proficient in English;
• Please note that we will respect the gender balance (50% of participants will be male and 50% will be female).

Candidates from the Eastern Partnership countries only: Before attending the Conference, successful applicants will take part in the Social Entrepreneurship School – in Armenia, 24-30 September for those coming from Armenia, Georgia and Moldova or in Ukraine, 1-7 October for those coming from Azerbaijan, Belarus and Ukraine.

Social Entrepreneurship Schools

The aim of the SE School is to give potential young entrepreneurs an opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial skills, increase their employability, and strengthen their involvement in the economic life of their communities. Participants are encouraged to start social ventures, develop a socially-oriented entrepreneurial mind-set and transfer the competencies gained back to their communities.
At the Social Entrepreneurship School, participants will learn to identify social problems, think how to solve them through a holistic approach and develop concrete local or cross-border social entrepreneurship ideas.
The School will help participants developing a number of skills, including communication and analytical skills, creative and strategic thinking, empathy, leadership, and problem-solving.

The deadline for candidates from the EU, Russia and Turkey is 1 September.