Youth Entrepreneurship Support

The Youth Entrepreneurship Support – YES project is a cross-border cooperation between one Romanian and one Hungarian association. The project is implemented within the Interreg Romania-Hungary V-A programme’s Priority Axis 3, in the framework of Specific Objective 3.1 – Investment Priority 8/b („Supporting employment-friendly growth through the development of endogenous potential as part of a territorial strategy for specific areas, including the conversion of declining industrial regions and enhancement of accessibility to, and development of, specific natural and cultural resources”).
The YES Education Programme aims for the achievement of the following four goals:
Teaching entrepreneurship skills to young people;
Providing opportunities to practice their newly gained knowledge in real life;
Offering mentorship from local entrepreneurs; and
Fostering peer networking – helping them to exchange ideas, innovate and continue to develop their entrepreneurial skills.
(1) A competency test devised to get a sense of the target group’s entrepreneurship skills and knowledge. The questionnaire leads the students through a set of everyday situations meant to measure the presence of 5 competencies: communication, risk-taking behaviour, responsibility, creativity/innovation and perseverance/tolerating failure. The assessment sheds some light on the students’ potential and problem areas, preparing them for the next stage of the programme.
(2) An online course, which you can take whenever and wherever you want. It will be an e-learning structure with an interactive curriculum – videos, reading materials and interesting homework – accessible from all kinds of digital devices; all this written in the language of high-school students to ease their learning process. The topic of the course is starting a business, using the Business Model Canvas method. Finishing the online course and the competency test are prerequisites to participating in the Bootcamp.
(3) Bootcamps to enhance your skills developed during the online course. The 3-day events serve as intensive idea-generating simulation-based workshops where upper-secondary school students work together in teams on developing a business plan which is then pitched to potential ‘investors’ in the framework of a contest. The workshops will provide practical assignments to the students, helping them apply their knowledge to real-life situations.
Students in their last two years of secondary education who are close to leaving school and join the labor market
Teachers who can help carrying on the initiative after the project ends
Educational institutions through their students and teachers, that can implement the initiative as a potential good practice
When establishing the partnership, the most important goal was to bring together organizations whose interests, expertise and competencies are relevant in the field, since this can guarantee the successful implementation of the project.
The Association of Business Promotion in Romania is an NGO certified for providing vocational trainings and experienced in cross-border cooperation. APPAR helps entrepreneurs to increase their competitiveness and the added value created by them: its knowledge-base about entrepreneurship and proficiency in education is extensive which will help during the creation of the curriculum and the trainings.
The Revita Foundation is a non-profit organization with high-quality expertise in research methodology, education, employment issues, project and financial management, so it can contribute significantly to the development of the competency test and training methodology, among other activities.