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Enable Youth Entrepreneurship
Start date: Sep 1, 2016, End date: Jun 30, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

In the years of a gradual recovery from the economic crisis, Bulgaria and a number of other EU Member states are still looking for sustainable solutions in order to tackle its effects on the labor market, where young people are among the most valuable. One of the possible solutions for this situation is for young people to take the leading role in their professional development and create new jobs by starting and developing their own business. In Bulgaria, youth entrepreneurship is promoted by the emerging entrepreneurship ecosystem, but a broader analysis shows that behind all of the trainings and simulation games aiming at boosting entrepreneurship skills of young people, there is a lack of a focused national policy towards the development of youth entrepreneurship. What is more, young people are final beneficiaries and just participants in these initiatives without having the opportunity to give their opinion on topics directly linked to their experience as young entrepreneurs and to discuss the administrative, judiciary and also simply technical burdens that they have to face.The implementation of the current project proposal is aims at responding to the necessity of making policies, which stress on and encourage youth entrepreneurship by conducting a structured dialogue between national and regional institutions responsible for these policies, and young people between 19 and 30 years of age. In particular, the proposal aims at providing a platform for the creation of new instruments and policies on both national and municipal level in order to promote youth entrepreneurship and to reduce the burdens for its development by empowering young people from the three biggest and economically most active Bulgarian cities – Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna. The target group is young people who are interested in developing their entrepreneurial idea and/or who have a certain experience in starting their own business. What unites them is their desire to make a change by taking part in the policy-making process in the field of youth policies and the sphere of policies encouraging youth entrepreneurship, thus willing to be actively involved in the process of drafting of specific proposals within the focused dialogue with experts who are responsible for the conducting of the abovementioned policies.In order to achieve these goals, the proposal foresees the organisation of three one-day introductory meetings with representatives of the responsible institutions on national level in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna; three two-days forums for a structured dialogue with regional institutions in each of the three municipalities; a final forum for a structured dialogue in Sofia with representatives of all of the national institutions, and a presentation of the specific proposals for reforming and increasing the performance of the policies encouraging youth entrepreneurship before the relevant committees in the National Assembly. The involvement of these young people in the project activities will encourage their active citizenship and it will help reinforce their culture of active participation in the policy and decision-making process. Furthermore, they will gain a confidence that they can influence the public institutions it a variety of areas of the social life. On the other hand, with the implementation of this proposal and the conducting of the structured dialogue, the representatives of the institutions dealing with youth policies will have the opportunity to interact with their target group and to get a direct feedback on what needs to be done in order to improve their efficiency. Last but not least, public institutions on both national and regional level will be further stimulated to apply the good governance principals as a result of the public interest directed toward their activities.Thus, by reforming the existing policies and instruments in the field of youth policy and entrepreneurship among young people, the team of the project hopes to find solutions which could be named as good practices and transferred to other Member States and thus can contribute to achieving of the common EU goals for a smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.
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