DOSE - Delegate Ownership on Social Entrepreneurship

DOSE – Delegate Ownership on Social Entrepreneurship is a training course aiming at equipping 20 youth workers from 10 countries with competencies and skills on supporting youth with fewer opportunities on running their own social entrepreneurship initiatives. The European construct is facing nowadays acute problems related to offering opportunities to its youth. More than 5.5 million young people are unemployed in the EU-28 area today and over 7.5 million young Europeans between 15 and 24 are not employed, not in education and not in training (NEETs) (Eurostat). Even if the European Commission is trying out structural reforms especially through the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI), the YEI will exclusively target NEETs aged up to 25 years, and where the Member State considers relevant, also those aged up to 30 years. But at the grassroots level, both youth and youth workers need support in trying to find a solution for improving the situation. The European programmes transferred as well to local and national priorities promoting the equity and inclusion of learners with disadvantaged backgrounds and fewer opportunities, specifically defined through disability, educational difficulties, economic obstacles, cultural differences, social obstacles and geographical obstacles. But at the grassroots level, most of the youth workers are facing the challenge of having to work with youth with facing multiple fewer opportunities: social, economic and cultural; disability and social; cultural and geographical, etc. For this purpose, youth workers need to be equipped with innovative working tools aiming at investing in youth potential and youth social capital, piloting new ways of detached youth work being a solution. For this purpose, DOSE comes with an innovative solution: as social entrepreneurship is at most the idea of combining innovative working methodologies used by business entrepreneurs with the desire to bring far-reaching social change (You(th) can! – YEU), youth can definitely be invested with the competencies and resources of reaching the social change, the youth workers being the main support of the specified target – youth facing fewer opportunities. But in order to do so, youth workers need to be trained on supporting youth with fewer opportunities on generating change in their communities. Thus, DOSE clearly tackles the lack of competencies of youth workers in supporting the development of own social entrepreneurship initiatives of youth with fewer opportunities and comes up with a frame where youth workers are both trained and also offered a space to network on supporting youth in stimulating social change in vulnerable communities. As stated, the current situation comes both on path dependency: youth being mainly the recipient of services and support rather than invested with the opportunity to lead the change in their community; the youth workers do not have the specific skills and competencies on supporting social entrepreneurship initiatives of young people; the authorities are failing in supporting youth with fewer opportunities as they are mainly living in areas facing a wide range of problems. If the situation is being perpetuated, youth facing this situation will be the adult’s group with the same type of problems and they will fail in taking initiative in the community and contributing to social change. More than this, youth with fewer opportunities will always be at risk of staying as an invisible group, far from the authorities and from the actors that could have a great impact on changing their situation. DOSE is coming up with an innovative approach on stimulating youth to contribute to social change: the youth worker is supporting the youth groups to find out the problems and their causes in the community and is guiding them to find a highly practical and creative solution for the problem identified. As social change means progress, the youth social entrepreneurship initiatives are essential to today’s world. But youth with fewer opportunities definitely need specialized support on understanding the importance of their action and the fact that they are the main voice in determining social change. Consequently, DOSE has the following objectives: equipping 24 youth workers working directly with youth with fewer opportunities with specific skills and competencies on supporting youth social entrepreneurship initiatives; developing a specific set of tools and competencies based on nonformal learning aiming at developing transversal and basic skills of youth with fewer opportunities; creating a space for the European organization to network and come up with clear project ideas aiming at developing opportunities for youth facing multiple fewer opportunities, projects aiming at boosting up youth participation, intercultural learning, social change and better understanding of the European values and concepts.