Digital Entrepreneurship Accelerator

“Digital Entrepreneurship Accelerator” took place in Bansko, Bulgaria, from 23rd of August to 1st of September 2021. Participants from Bulgaria, Romania, The Republic of North Macedonia, Serbia, Cyprus, Italy, Turkey, and Lithuania engaged in a wide range of activities – from easy team building games to creating and presenting an actual business model to local successful entrepreneurs and experiencing a pre – accelerator journey. The project trained 32 participants and the outcome of the project is:

• 32 youth workers, teachers, volunteers in organisations gained new methods for NFE by using digital tools;
• 32 participants experienced in DigComp and EntreComp and understood the notion of entrepreneurial and digital competences;
• 32 participants who gained new methods for delivering digital youth work.
• 32 participants who understand the notion of business management and capacity to explain the importance of it.

The training course and its participants created a safe space for learning, therefore after only 8 days in the training course some of the participants even decided to put their business ideas to a test. They presented the ideas to other participants and everyone shared their insights on the idea.

Read the newsletter of the project here.

The project is funded by the National Agency of Bulgaria and co-financed by the Erasmus + program.

This course was a great opportunity for our team to present and promote the results obtained during the implementation of the “Entrepreneurial Mindset” project. By this approach, we shared our experience in social entrepreneurship with 32 youth workers, teachers, volunteers from 8 European organizations.

Antonio, the group leader, shared his experience with us:

“During the 9 days from the project, each one of the participants had the chance, support and materials to develop their skills to become a successful entrepreneur. Because we had the opportunity to participate in a training course, everything was more focused into the subject and the trainer pushed each one of us into becoming an active person during the meetings.

We had a meeting with successful entrepreneurs from Bulgaria who presented their businesses and shared with us some tips which can be applied on our ideas. After that, we went into practicalities: we split into 5 teams and we had the opportunity to create our own business idea on that specified subject.

In my opinion, that was the most exciting part of that project: each member of the  team had the chance to speak and develop their own ideas. Even if all the teams speeded the process and was sure that we are „done”, the trainer put our ideas into the real life scenario and after the discussion, all the teams changed their idea. At the end of the chapter, each team had a brilliant idea which was then presented to a jury formed of the real life businessmen and the trainer like in a real life „Shark Tank”. We were shocked that each team had an innovative idea and with some polish could be a real money-making business.

At the end we have received some lessons regarding money management, investing in different fields and each participant had the chance to present their experience. I was very shocked when I was relating my experience into stocks trading, contract for differences trading and crypto trading and everybody was listening to me and really absorbing the information that I was giving. Other girl has received a big approval of the public regarding her ideas in making a journalism business.“

Place: Bansko, Bulgaria

Date: 23rd of August to 1st of September 2021