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Description
The main idea of the Migrant Talent Garden project is to support young migrants (through mentorship, online tools, training courses and events) on their way to implementing business ideas. Our project has a cycle of events for both integration workers, business representatives and migrants. The focus of activities is on developing theoretical and practical knowledge of entrepreneurship, business creation opportunities and establishment in the labour market. This project consists of 3 big parts: training for business and migrant centres, capacity training for migrants and a business incubator.
The training focuses on exchanging knowledge between entrepreneurship mentors and organisations that support migrants. We have already organised 6 workshops for experts to understand the basics of entrepreneurship and migrant perspectives.
Right now, we continue with 12 capacity-building workshops for everybody interested in starting a business. These workshops focus on developing an idea, testing it, presenting it, and starting to build it. For those who decide to start a business or have already begun it but are struggling, we will provide an incubation/acceleration program.
Business incubator is based on three pillars – education, acceleration and motivation. Such a program aims to help founders test their business model, inform them about entrepreneurship topics, and show them how to stay motivated and reach their dreams!
We estimate that around 1,680 young migrants will boost their relevant competences, while 100 will get employed during the project activities. Additionally, we will help business and integration support institutions to increase their entrepreneurial capacity.
Summary of project results
The project was needed because at the time we noticed the difficulty for young migrants to get (self)employed and the lack of registered business hubs/incubators for young migrant entrepreneurs. Therefore, our objective goal was to address high and rising migrant youth unemployment by uniting field experts in a multi-national entrepreneurship support programme. In the beginning, the study visits, good practice analysis, surveys, and interviews were conducted. Later we focused more on the HUB implementation: business experts and integration workers training, Capacity training for the beneficiaries and Incubator educational courses and mentorship for young migrants, and the Final Conference event during which we selected three winning teams that received crowdfunding campaign support and assistance for a smoother launch. These activities were essential for us to understand the field better and provide knowledge to the target groups and partners we were working with (SMEs, Entrepreneurs, and Civil Society Organisations) that later we worked together with and helped beneficiaries, young migrants gain skills and knowledge required for them to improve their employment situation by becoming (self)employed or starting their own business. The training and mentorship provided to the beneficiaries were vital for young migrant entrepreneurs as they helped to guide them in the process of working on their business idea and receive all needed knowledge and support from the experts in the field. This way, more than 300 people joined our incubators and actively participated in the learning and business constructing process.
Summary of bilateral results
By having a donor project partner we could make a significant impact on the employment situation in each country where we had any activities. Without the Donors, we would not be able to conduct a project with such a wide spectrum of activities and opportunities provided for young migrants.