The network is meant to focus on sustainable development for disadvantaged youth
Desert Bloom Cooperation Circle (a URI member group in Amman, Jordan) participated in “Social-preneurship for Sustainable Growth among Disadvantaged Youths (SPP)", a youth exchange held in Manchester, United Kingdom from 23th August to 1st September 2018.
Thirty participants coming from nine countries (UK, Italy, Lithuania, Turkey, Jordan, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, and Serbia) participated in Youth Exchange. The overall project aim was to empower young participants with fewer opportunities and from disadvantaged backgrounds to become social and business entrepreneurs. They were encouraged to start their small social projects or businesses.
Participants learned about the concept of social entrepreneurship as a mindset to tackle problems across different sectors (public, private, non-profit). They were inspired to find new ways to tackle the world’s greatest challenges. This was an eye-opener to young participants; it encouraged them to explore pathways for how they can make change whether this is founding an enterprise, serving on a board, or supporting social entrepreneurs in other creative ways. The exchange also tackled the role of Social Entrepreneurship in sustainable business, including corporate social responsibility (energy efficiency, reduced carbon footprint, recycling and reuse, fair treatment of employees, and charitable giving, among other considerations).
Click the yellow arrows to scroll through the photos in the slideshow below.
Among the project’s long-term goals, was creating a sustainable network of partners committed to spreading, supporting, reinforcing and advocating social transformation in their respective countries applying Social entrepreneurship model. The network is meant to focus on sustainable development for disadvantaged youth.
The training used an informal training process, field trips, role plays, active learning methods, icebreakers, energizers, inter-cultural and experiential learning, working together in groups to create hypothetical social business during the "Social Enterprise Game" in which they built and fashioned out their own socio-preneurship identities, created their own corporate social structures and identified its impacts on the society. Desert Bloom participants conducted plans for several practical social entrepreneurship initiatives. They showed a great ability to turn ideas into action. They came up with creative ideas for social initiatives taking manageable risks.
