Social Impact and Job Creation

The young European participants of “Social Impact and Job Creation” project met in Florence

Friday the 16th marked the conclusion of the Youth in Action project “Social Impact and Job Creation”.

The main idea of the program was to foster social innovation and business ideas using two powerful means: an exchange experience between Italian and Catalan youths and an in depth analysis of business models and social business.

To do this, the Italian and Catalan partners (AVEC Onlus and Tandem Social) worked with the young participants to explain how a business model works and how to work on your business ideas. Thanks to this initial work, both the groups were able to collaborate and build together upon different social businesses proposals they came up with: there is no better way to understand how something works (i.e. social business) than to actually tinker with it!

After an initial exchange in Barcelona, the project conclusion involved another trip: this time the Catalan youth came to Florence to present the business ideas they worked upon with the Italian group.

During these 4 days, the participants met Italian social businesses, like I Ragazzi di Sipario, a restaurant where most of the workers have mental and psychic disabilities.

Another interesting visited social business was MYGRANTOUR, a walking tour of Florence with a migrant guide that showed the youths a different, more multicultural take on the city of Dante. Walking in the streets near Santa Maria Novella the Italian-Catalan group met different realities of the migrant culture: from “Anelli Mancanti”, a volunteer association that helps migrant people with the often-painful process of integration, to various ethnic shops where the boundary between Italy and other countries became more and more blurred.

All of this while preparing for Friday the 16: on that day, the Italian and Catalan youths presented their business ideas during a special event, held by Impact HUB Firenze, which saw the contribution of Luca De Biase, an important Italian journalist.

To know more about the first part of the project, you can visit the blog of the Catalan partners : http://europeansocialentrepreneurs.blogspot.it/
You can also watch some photos of the event on the Impact HUB Facebook page.