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“Youth Crowd”
Start date: Oct 1, 2016, End date: May 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Association "Expert Pool - Bulgaria", in partnership with „A Rocca“ organization - Italy, initiates the project "yCrowd" - a platform for collective (crowd) funding for young entrepreneurs.Crowdfunding generally refers to an open call to the public to raise funds for a specific project. In 2012 about €735 million1 was raised for all forms of crowdfunding in Europe and the predicted figure for 2013 is around €1 billion. This figure is rather marginal compared to retail bank lending to non-financial institutions (€6 trillion in 2011), but it is promising compared to the financing provided by business angels (visible market segment estimated at €660 million in 2010) or venture capitalists in seed, start-up, later and growth stages (€7 billion in 2012). Crowdfunding is an important source of finance to some half a million European projects each year (Industry estimates show that in 2012 some 470 000 European projects were financed successfully through crowdfunding) that otherwise may not obtain the necessary funds to be realised.There is great potential in crowdfunding to complement traditional sources of finance and contribute to the financing of the real economy. Crowdfunding can offer various benefits to a large spectrum of users which cannot find solutions for their funding needs. Such a group are the young entrepreneurs seeking fast and affordable way to realize their ideas. The current project proposal "yCrowd", aims to create a transnational instrument for promoting entrepreneurial attitudes and implementation of entrepreneurial projects of the youth from the partnering countries.Specific objectives: ÷ Creating a platform for crowd funding of non-financial return (crowd sponsoring) youth projects. ÷ Raising the public awareness about crowd financing, promoting information and organizing training and confidence building. ÷ Elaboration of training modules for youth-project promoters to develop their entrepreneurial skills and attitudes.Access to finance is one of the most pressing problems facing young entrepreneurs. Many projects' demand for financing is not met by any existing sources of finance, which is referred to generally as the financing gap. Some segments of the economy, such as social enterprises or the cultural and creative sector, do not find many responses tailored to their needs, due to their specific characteristics including social objectives or the dependence on intangible assets and the high uncertainty of market demand. Crowdfunding matches small - or even bigger – contributors and investors directly with the projects in need of funds, mainly in the early stages.The total project duration is 14 months.The project activities include: elaboration of the platform for crowd funding of non-financial return (crowd sponsoring) youth projects - "yCrowd"; involving young people from the two partner countries - Bulgaria and Italy in entrepreneurship training and initiation of projects via the platform for crowd funding; conducting online information campaigns.

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