NGO2Business

The training course will gather 33 youth workers from Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Italy, Romania and Czech Republic in Lithuania from 2nd to 12th of November, 2016. It is a Call for missing participants.

The Training course: “NGO2Business: preparing NGO’s for effective cooperation with Business” is being implemented under the Erasmus + program, KA1 action. The project is being implemented by partners: MOPT (Lithuania), JASMA (LV), Maltezka pomoc (CZ), SAMR (RO), Universum NGO (PL), HEAK (EE), TRIPS (IT). The training course will gather 33 youth workers in Lithuania from 2nd to 12th of November, 2016.

Rationale: The project partner consortium cooperating with Business partners face situations were NGO representatives are lacking certain attitudes, knowledge and skills needed for effective and mutually beneficial cooperation with business sector. Project partners see, that in many cases NGO representatives are victimizing themselves and are seeking for “support or donations” for “sacred/holly” work they are doing. We believe that mutually beneficial cooperation, where NGO’s and Business organizations are at win-win situation is something to reach for. We want to promote concept of Social Economy in Lithuania and Other EU countries. For this we are initiating an international training course with the main goal to encourage participants to be ready and look for contact and effective cooperation with the business world.

Aim of the training course:

Supporting the professionalization of the NGO sector, through strengthening youth worker ability to foster social economy ventures and developing cooperation approach towards business.

Objectives:

1. Enable youth workers to look for contact and cooperation opportunities with the business sector.
2. Provide youth workers with practical knowledge, concrete tools and skills necessary to start effective cooperation with business sector in their local communities.
3. Learn how to incorporate and communicate organisational goals into cooperation practices with business field.
4. Develop win-win approach in daily NGO practices, to strengthen the value proposition of the benefits created by the work of the NGO.
5. Provide youth workers with business know-how which could be used in NGO development.

Participants of the training course will be able to:

– See a “wider picture” of local real realities participants are working in. Analysing local realities and searching for values NGO can create and plan it’s activities rationally and effectively, attracting potential partners;

– Strategic (long term) planning of initiatives oriented to solve social problems, but also attracting business sector as a solid partner;

– Develop ideas for social enterprises;

– Understand what is corporate social responsibility and how NGO can play an active role in it;

– To speak the language of benefits, how to approach business companies, so NGO look like a solid partner;

Participants will develop skill set needed for social entrepreneurship:

– Communication skills;

– Negotiation skills;

– Cooperation skills;

– Management skills;

– Leadership and intercultural communication;

– Basics in youth employability.

Target group:

The target group of the project are youth leaders and workers working directly with young people (especially with fewer opportunity youth), representatives of partner organizations, youth policy and youth work stakeholders. We will host 5 participants from each project country.

Methodology:

Main principals we will follow during the learning process are (methodology):

1. Learner centered approach – it will be taken into account the personal needs and interests of each participants leading to personal and professional development.
2. Dealing with diversity – by creating the safe environment the diversity within a group will be seen as the source for sharing and learning.
3. Relevance to reality – the learning will be as close as possible to the reality of the participants making the links to and taking the examples from the real situation of the participants.
4. Learning from the experience – the personal experience of participants will be the source for learning by reflecting on it and making the conclusions for further application.
5. Active participation – space and conditions for active participation will ensure active role and involvement of the participants during the learning process

Following the principles listed above the variety of methods and learning elements will help to achieve the set objectives.

We will select people who are:

–              Active in direct, educational work with young people

–              Have support from their organisation (or right to decide) for initiating projects and representing organisation towards business world.

–              Willing to search for and initiate mutually beneficial cooperation with business field.