Enhancing youth capacity in municipalities and encouraging mutual cooperation using social entrepreneurship as a tool

Municipalities are a driving force in their respective regions setting the course of actions for their stakeholders. Youth organisations and social enterprises (organisations and social enterprise...

The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the social inclusion and social integration in regional, local communities in post-COVID19 situation by strengthening the cooperation between community based youth organisations and social enterprises and local municipalities, and promoting social entrepreneurship as an effective tool for reducing economic inequality, promoting social inclusion and integration, creating resilient society and fostering active participation within local communities. Specific objectives: - to strengthen the capacity and skills of local municipalities to support and cooperate with social enterprises, and to initiate result oriented partnerships among municipalities and youth community based organisations and social enterprises through providing tools, policy recommendations, experience exchange, educational and trust building activities. - to strengthen the capacity and skills of youth organisations and social enterprise to adapt to the COVID19/post-COVID19 situation, improve their cooperation and partnership skills with local municipalities and use these skills to implement existing and new social initiatives. - to communicate stories and narratives about the power of social entrepreneurship in creating more resilient communities and positive social impact on a local level, and about the importance of local government institutions and local community representatives working together to achieve this. - to provide various international case studies for common learning on the cooperation building - to pilot the approach of mapping and creation of a local action plan for a certain municipality - to encourage local municipalities to create long-term, sustainable cooperation and new social enterprises - to test the pilot-municipality approach, working closely with one case-study, replicating the learnings on a larger scale. Through the project, we wish to encourage more municipalities to get interested and involved in cooperating with Youth organisations and social enterprises, by leveraging the international experience to be learned from. We have been working in many ways (research, case study collection, webinars, individual meetings) to raise awareness for the municipality representatives about the impact created by the local organisations and to stimulate the cooperation. - to fully investigate the correlation between local councils and youth organisations, social enterprises as well as develop and promote social entrepreneurship in these areas.

The project is a strategic approach to meet the needs of the partnership put forward in four phases: 1.Working with pilot municipalities in each country to map the existing organisations in the chosen territory, cooperation methods, needs and best practises. MAPPING OF NEEDS will be a complex of gathered information that will present the overall situation in chosen pilot municipalities in the partner countries. It will analyse actual collaboration models, define cooperation gaps and identify challenges. Involvement of different partner countries will show a great variety of cooperation models, therefore, allowing partners to learn from each other. 2.Creation of a toolbox, drawing on the conclusions from the first phase, researching the methods of cooperation with the municipality, creating recommendations for fruitful cooperation and collecting the case studies. It will be a compilation of practical tools that will promote cooperation and create a support system for youth organisations, youth led social enterprises and municipalities and it will present useful instruments that both parties can use to enhance successful cooperation. 3.Creation of the Policy recommendations for the overall improvement of the regulation. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS for Youth Organizations and Municipalities will summarize insights and learning lessons from all project activities in the form of policy recommendations for partner country's youth organizations, youth work policy makers, municipality representatives and other stakeholders. 4.Case specific action plan to implement and boost the cooperation for the pilot municipalities. ROADMAP AND FURTHER STEPS will set further steps and action plans to be taken by the stakeholders to promote and continue the work that was initiated in the project. The results will be combined into an action plan that project partners, stakeholders or any other organisation interested in the topic will be able to use and easily adapt to their situation. All phases have a dedicated working plan, described as a work package, aims and activities planned that follows the previously achieved results. Activities will be complemented with the two learning events. First training “Experience exchange on needs and challenges for cooperation between youth organizations and municipalities” will aim to exchange experience on challenges and needs in municipalities regarding the cooperation possibilities with youth organisations, youth social enterprises, to share the ideas of youth involvement in social entrepreneurship as a tool to find innovative ways how to solve local problems in regions, to create cooperation platforms for youth organisations, social enterprises and local municipalities. The GOAL of the second training “TOOLBOX as a practical instrument to enhance youth capacity in cooperation with municipalities” is to inspire and encourage youth, youth organizations and social enterprises to look for cooperation possibilities as it can help to achieve their goals. As well as to examine the TOOLBOX as a practical instrument to enhance youth capacity - the skills, knowledge and know-how and motivation of youth organisations and social enterprises in cooperation with municipalities by implementing non-formal learning and training activities on how to practically use different cooperation tools and approaches and how to integrate them in the daily work of youth organizations and social enterprises.

*The end results of MAPPING OF NEEDS will be a compilation of: database of youth organisations and social enterprises that are existing or potential partners to municipalities. It will contain not only contact information of stakeholders, but also their experience and challenges of creating successful cooperation in the chosen territory. Master file of the database will contain all collected information, however a specific public version will be produced (excluding sensitive data according to GDPR) for wider use. needs and challenges of cooperation of youth organisations and municipalities in all partner countries. To identify more precisely needs and challenges partners will additionally conduct research from both the point of view of municipalities and youth organisations. cooperation models among municipalities and youth organisations and social enterprises in all partner countries. Previously gathered and analysed information will allow partners to define the best cooperation models as an example to learn and develop the partnerships more successfully. Main conclusions from data gathering and practical C1 event. *The end results of TOOLBOX will be a compilation of user friendly tools: Five steps for youth organisations and social enterprises to successful cooperation with municipalities and for municipalities to successful cooperation with youth organisations and social enterprises, partners will identify five step practical guides from previously gathered methods and experiences. Compilation of different cooperation methods with recommendations from municipalities. Collection of case studies (successful cooperation of municipalities and youth organisations and social enterprises). Collection of partner countries legal steps that municipalities can do to support youth organisations and social enterprises. *The end results of POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS will be an online publication with: - policy recommendations for local and national level policy makers, youth organisations and other stakeholders for each partner country; - overview and summary of all policy recommendations. *The end results of ROADMAP AND FURTHER STEPS will be an online publication: local action plan for cooperation in each of partners’ countries, written guidelines, next steps and further cooperation possibilities for partners to develop the topic. Summary, wrap-up of the project and tips for further development of the topic. As a RESULT of the overall project activities: - Project partners will improve skills, know-how, competencies and capacity regarding the cooperation methods and will be able to promote and develop the topic further. - Other organisations will improve capacity, skills and know-how, have access to created tools and will feel motivated to use them. - At least 5 new best practice stories regarding cooperation with municipalities in every project partner country. - Youth sector will be much better positioned to demonstrate and prove their value to the stakeholders. - In long term youth organisations, workers and youth social entrepreneurship stakeholders, policy makers, decision makers and ecosystem enablers will recognize the importance of support and value of youth work and their impact to local, national and international contect.