Partners Albania together with partner organizations from the region and Europe are implementing the new project WISEs for Youth in Western Balkans (WISEs4Youth – Work Integration Social Enterprises).  WISEs4Youth is an Erasmus + project which aims to develop training activities for social entrepreneurial skills development targeting potential young social entrepreneurs in Western Balkans.

The project’s main activities during the two years of implementation are; study visits, peer-to-peer events, trainings, and a final toolkit for beneficiaries. Through these activities the project will benefit young potential social entrepreneurs, young people already interested in pursuing entrepreneurial training, and young people who have completed compulsory education and are looking for employment opportunities, offering them the opportunity to acquire knowledge and managerial skills.

The specific objectives of the project: 

• Promote youth social entrepreneurship in the Western Balkans region through training and mobility activities (such as study visits).
• Create replicable and sustainable training methodology and modules that will orient and guarantee and effective and targeted training implementation.
• Promote mobility and exchanges between the different project partner countries through study visits organized in successful WISEs or social enterprises.
• Implement structured training activities involving partners and young potential entrepreneurs, through the empirical application of training modules.
• Strengthen the creation of regional WISEs and social enterprise networks in the region, promote the social impact of these businesses, and achieve among others common growth and inclusion of young people.
• Impact measurement from project results (Toolkit).

The implementing partners of the WISEs4Youth project:

European Network of Social Integration Enterprises (ENSIE) Belgium

Act Group(AG) Croatia

Sent-Slovenian Association for Mental Health (SENT) Slovenia

Initiative for Development and Cooperation (IDC) Serbia

Community Development Institute (CDI) North Macedonia

Partners Albania for Change and Development (PA) Albania

The project is funded by the European Union.

Project Kick-Off meeting

On May 13th, the WISEs4Youth project partners met online for the kick-off meeting to go through the project work packages and to exchange their vision of the project, the next steps, and how to kick off the project activities in the next months.

First transnational project meeting

On September 9th, the project partners met online for their first transnational project meeting to take stock of the activities, led by the consortium since the beginning of the project and to exchange about the project, the latest news, and the next steps. The quality assurance and internal evaluation guide, and the work on the training modules were presented and discussed with the partners.

WIESEs4Youth Project Deliverables

The project partners developed and prepared the first two deliverables in the framework of the WISEs4Youth project, which are two training modules directed to potential future young entrepreneurs in the Western Balkans:

• Curriculum for (training of partners) on Social Enterprises (SE) and Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs)  – Download here 
• Curriculum for impact management and measurement – Download here 

Both curriculums will be used during training sessions implemented in partner countries (AL, RS, MK, HR, SI) aimed at young people who aspire to become social entrepreneurs!

The report on “Training Modules Development” is now published. It aims to explicit the reasoning behind the two training modules’ development process.

The report is available in each respective language of the project partners. Download here in English.

Training for Trainers

The project partners gathered together in Ljubljana during 15-20 January 2023, on the premises of the organization SENT , in a ‘Training for Trainers’ where they were introduced to and discussed the content of the training modules developed, as well as the methodology for transmitting the knowledge gained in the TOT, to the training programs that will take place in each partner countries (Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia) for young people who aim and aspire to become social entrepreneurs!