Youth Social Entrepreneurs (YES) – Italy

Youth Social Entrepreneurs (YES) - Italy

It was June 18th, and we, as a brave trio of Erasmus+ project participants, began our week-long journey in a small town in northern Sardinia - Uri, known for its artichoke festival. Immediately on the second day after our arrival, the locals came to welcome us at the town hall, where we had the opportunity to learn more about the town, its history, and its inhabitants. The following days were primarily dedicated to the project's theme - Social Entrepreneurship, where we focused more deeply on entrepreneurship in the social sphere, both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Gradually, several diverse activities took place, such as workshops, discussions, and teamwork. We started by specifically identifying problems - we chose the three most prominent in our country, their impacts, and solutions. We continued with teamwork, focused on creating an organization that would address a specific social problem, its structure, funding, operation, and overall purpose. Finally, we worked on creating a youth exchange and developing its program. It was a very good and beneficial experience, during which we were often exposed to situations where we had to step out of our comfort zone. We worked in very diverse teams, where it was sometimes difficult to find agreement and compromise. During this Erasmus, we also managed to go on an excursion to a startup that focused on processing energy from solar panels used for purifying water from local sources. However, our program was not only about education and project work, but good food, fun, and gaining new experiences and friends were also a very important part. We met many interesting people who were often a great help and inspiration to us. We spent the last day on the beach, where we had a lot of fun. Although we really didn't want to go home, we are sure that we haven't seen these people for the last time and we will definitely meet again someday.

From 18th to 23th of June three young proactives from Slovakia had a chance to participate in a project about social entrepreneurship in Uri, Sardegna. It was obvious from the very first minute that the program will not only be full of rewarding information in the field of social entrepreneurship, but also about the culture, history and amazing people.

Throughout the days, we learnt a lot about the problems of each country, sources of the issues and how we could possibly solve them. In a very natural way we were able to see the main purpose of the social part in businesses. One of the activities was creating a detailed business model canvas, in which we could solve optional problems. To make it more practical, we visited a local startup that solves a social problem and could possibly help more and more countries in the future.

The program did not lack good Italian food and the possibility to go on the beach or enjoy the local community. These elements gave us a lot of memories we can now think of in a positive way. Even though the pandemic situation, the trip to Uri was a great opportunity.