With great ambition and enthusiasm, YouthProAktiv welcomed the start of our new European project “Social Entrepreneurship as enabler of social inclusion” (SESI) on the 1st of March 2023— an Action 2 project under the Erasmus+ program.  Hence, from the last 29th to the 31st of March, YPA hosted the KICK-OFF meeting of SESI, its first project management meeting with all partner coordinators. 

The idea behind the project is that social entrepreneurship can be a leverage for inclusion at both local and international levels. Indeed, it will allow young people to be drivers of change by foreseeing a training support mechanism directly involving youth trainers. Thus, SESI aims to enhance the capacity of youth workers to enable young people the use social entrepreneurship as a tool for providing innovative solutions to the current challenges. The partners contributing to this project are AIDE from Romania, Fundacja reGeneracja from Poland, and Espacio Geranios from Spain. 

More concretely, SESI has the following specific objectives:

• Setting up strategic and sustainable partnerships to learn about and promote social entrepreneurship as an inclusion enabler for youngsters with disadvantaged backgrounds by collecting and sharing best practices. 
• Develop a blended and replicable training programme that can provide know-how and resources to youth workers on how to teach social entrepreneurship to young people through the development of video pills, a training scheme, and international workshops.
• Build capacity for rural and disadvantaged young people to start social projects through interaction and collaboration with youth workers and experts and by building an online community to share ideas, goals, practical tips, and different tasks.
• Disseminate and promote a model of training which defines “social entrepreneurship as a driver of social inclusion” and benefits youth workers and young people alike, to be upheld at a policy level.

In this initial project meeting, the Project Steering Committee had the first contact together, thus reviewing the objectives & goals of the project, jointly with its different included activities, deliverables, expectations, strategies, and teamwork management organization. It was a pleasure to host the coordinators from the respective partners of the Consortium. The three days of this kick-off meeting were truly productive and work-intensive, thanks to the positive synergy and atmosphere created by all coordinators, and everyone’s commitment to the project!