Entrepreneurship is important for the financial stability of a country. Unfortunately, many southern European countries have suffered from a high youth unemployment rate, especially because of the economic crisis which has hit the European Union in the recent years. The majority of the European countries of the South are characterized as agricultural countries. We have given signs of progress concerning the increasing trends in the number of young people who decided to start a business on farming.
However, as it has been described by the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), the majority of them lack the necessary skills and competences as many of them have not studied in the sector but took over their family business or decided to work in the sector due to the high rates of unemployment.
As part of the effort to combat this phenomenon of lack of skills and knowledge in entrepreneurship, the Institute of Entrepreneurship Development participates with partners from Cyprus and Spain in the European project “Grow Green”. In that way, “Grow Green” aims to enrich young professionals’ knowledge concerning the field, and to contribute to addressing the issue of youth unemployment by boosting rural and regional economy through the creation of new agribusinesses.
“Grow Green” focuses on the:
- Decrease of youth unemployment by involving more young people in the agriculture sector.
- Reduction of NEET (referring to a person who is Not in Employment, Education or Training), by mostly focusing and approaching countries which have both high rates of NEET, but also growth potential of the agro-food sector.
- Boost of agro-entrepreneurial culture amongst young people.
Within the framework of the project, a partners’ meeting took place on the 10th and 11th of January 2018. The partners from the three participating countries met in the city of Larissa, they discussed about the recent produced materials of the project and they all planned together the next working phases of the project.
During the previous working months of the project, a platform, http://grow-green.org and three on-line courses were created. The online courses are titled «On-Line Training Course on Agriculture», «Be Entrepreneur; A Business Plan for Agricultural Enterprises and «The Agricultural Sector within the three local spaces» and they will be soon available for use on the platform. At the moment the platform is under development. Its final version, will consist of two parts, the theoretical on entrepreneurship, which will be focused on the needs of the three participating countries and the practical one which will mainly contain the «Educational Video Presentations from Agricultural Experts», video–interviews of agronomists and farmers and they will include information of the production prosses of their products and other useful education materials.
In addition, the partners during the meeting analyzed the quantitative and qualitative management issues of the project and other practical issues. Stay tuned and find out first the updates, materials and actions of the project!
Project Website: www.grow-green.org
