The 15-month project ”SHIFT – towards online and offline entrepreneurship community” has come to an end, and the final conference was held on the 11th of January 2018 in Kumanovo.
The conference aimed to provide space for discussion on the topic of social entrepreneurship with the different stakeholders at the local and cross-sectoral level, to map the challenges that are ahead of the road, as well as to discuss and plan future steps for cross-certoral cooperation in this field. The conference was attended by the project partners from Bulgaria, No frontiers – 21 Century Association, as well as by local and regional stakeholders, such as teachers and professors, entrepreneurs, institutions and local administration staff.
The conference consisted of a panel with guests who together presented and debated the challenges related to promoting social entrepreneurship in Macedonia. Blage Jakimovski from the Agency for Employment spoke about policies and measures that the agency is conducting to foster self-employment and employment; Blagica Petrova from HERA and Sonja Stojanovska from the Center for Women Entrepreneurs presented their enterprises, speaking about the steps and challenges in opening an enterprise in Macedonia; finally, David Aleksovski from Macedonia presented his experience in managing projects and gave some policy recommendations for fostering creation of social enterprises.
The second part, the parallel workshops, have produced ideas regarding follow-up and future steps in the cross-sectoral realm, including future possibility for collaboration between the municipality and civil society organisations on social entrepreneurship.
The main goal of the project is to provide innovative and interactive tools for non-formal education, which will enable the development and improvement of knowledge and skills in the unemployed population, especially among young people and members of marginalized communities in the direction of creating self-employment and increasing the competitiveness of individuals labor market. The target groups were: unemployed people aged 18 to 30, who seek first employment, social entrepreneurs in the region, stakeholders and citizens from the region in Bulgaria and Macedonia.
The main activities of the project are divided into a timeframe of 15 months, including the creation of a joint project coordination team, creating an online web platform that includes E-courses in 4 modules on Business, Project Management, English, and Entrepreneurship, seminars, study visits, traveling Caravan for social entrepreneurship and final conference.
More information on the project and its activities can be found at www.shiftlearning.net.