Conference “Economic empowerment of LGBT+ population and other vulnerable populations through development of social entrepreneurship”

The three-day working conference was held in Šabac (Serbia) from 18. to 20. August of 2019. The aim of the conference was to inform professional and general public, as well as the donor community about local project results, but also to elaborate concept of social enterprise. A Guidebook “Coming Out of Unemployment” for youth workers was also presented at the conference as well as examples of good practice of social enterprise from the region.

The three day working meeting was held in Ohrid (North Macedonia)

The three-day working meeting was held in Ohrid (North Macedonia) from 15. to 18. June of 2019. Its aim was to elaborate in detail the objectives and themes to be addressed in the ”Manual on the Development of Social Entrepreeurship”. During the meetings each participant had opportunity to exchange information, ideas and to express their opinions and influence the process of drafting the manual. The meeting was conducted in small groups and large group to achieve maximum operational efficiency which was resulted to high quality production of the manual, which is important for its applicability later, in practice. The meeting was facilitated by the authors of the manual and experienced moderators selected from the organizations partners in the project.

The training course about social entrepreneurship was held in Šabac (Serbia)

The nine-day training course for youth workers was held in Šabac (Serbia)Youth workers from five countries: Serbia, North Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina took part in nine days long training in Serbia (Šabac) from 08. to 16. of May, for obtaining adequate knowledge about social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in general. The concept of training was developed out of the study visit in Spain and personal years-long experience of Association Rainbow as the project leader in this field. Participants also learned how to transfer their knowledge as trainers from experienced trainers and now they are able to disseminate the acquired knowledge and skills further in their countries. This will lead to the domino effect where youth workers continue to transfer their knowledge and skills to others through their own trainings after this project is completed, whereas in doing so we increase the duration for which the aims of this project will be achieved.

Visiting the organizations of social entrepreneurship

Representatives of the Association Rainbow and partner organizations: Subversive Front / Subversive Front from FYR Macedonia, Iskorak from Croatia, LGBT Forum Progres from Montenegro, Sarajevo Open Center from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Colegas – Confederación LGBT Española from Spain visiting social enterprises from Madrid:

  • Angatá Asociación Cultural – Tienda de arte africano, which sale hand-made clothes and items created by women from Africa, and in that way empowers them.
  • Fundación 26 de Diciembre whose primary activity is the provision of housing assistance to LGBT elderly people.
  • UrbanDataEye is a company that deals with public health diagnostics in order to successfully address issues related to malfunction, safety, traffic jams or accidents.
    Study visit is organized as one of the activities of the Erasmus + project “Coming Out of Unemployment” with the aim of economic empowerment of young LGBT members.