Vobrousek and the Love for Bees...

© vobrousek.cz

While being a part of the project 'Roadmap of Social Enterprises' (with financial support of Visegrad Fund) that aims to create a digital map of social enterprises in 8 countries, namely Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, I currently have this great possibility to look for and meet some inspiring examples of social entrepreneurs in Czech Republic. And one of them is Natálie Pivrncová, a young entrepreneur and the producer of environmentally and bees-friendly beeswax wraps 'Vobrousek' - a reusable and long-lasting alternative to plastic and/or aluminium food packaging. I had the chance to hear the inspiring story of Natálie during the Erasmus+ international training course 'Sustainable ImPACT' organised by the NGO Youth Progress Czech Republic gathering young and active people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Armenia, Portugal and Czech Republic. Moreover, as a group we had this amazing opportunity to participate in a practical workshop and make beeswax wraps ourselves...

Social Enterprises in Belgrade: Fighting Stigmas and Filling the Gaps of Dysfunctional Social Support Systems...

In the beginning of April I was a part of an international group of active people (NGO activists, highschool students, future social entrepreneurs) from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia and Czech Republic that met in Belgrade for a study visit to get a peek into the scene of social enterprises in Serbia. In just one day we had a chance to visit and speak to three different social entrepreneurs each having their strong and noble missions to change things in their communities and especially for their target groups. We spoke to the representatives of association 'Naša Kuća', and NGOs 'Atina' and 'Center for Youth Integration' that run socially entrepreneurial entities. Since the law on social enterprises in Serbia came to being literally just now (yet with no tax discounts as such) these entities take a form of limited liability companies and other business forms. Despite all sorts of limitations and challenges we evidenced that the world is still full of good people that work hard and find ways to make this world a better place...

Exploring the Scene - Social Enterprises in Czech Republic

© iED

Czech Republic has a very versatile and encouraging amount of socially entrepreneurial initiatives as we found out during our initial search in the depths of Internet. That's where we started our search. It was especially exciting for my fellow-explorer that discovered a completely new field of businesses doing things differently with society and the environment in mind.

Even though Czech laws regarding social enterprises are rather flexible at the moment (not strictly defined), it hasn't stopped many entrepreneurial minds to come up with very inspiring, innovative, environmentally friendly and inclusive business initiatives. These initiatives take different legal forms - work integration enterprises, associations, cooperatives, companies with limited liability, not-for-profit organisations (further referred to as NPOs) etc (Frankova, 2019). There are also different support mechanisms in place such as grants and loans, as well as a few mainstream banks, innovation centres and business incubators that help with subsidies, intellectual capital and/or visibility. Most of the social enterprises and initiatives that we found have a social media presence (Facebook and Instagram), beside physical websites (with e-shops allowing to purchase their products and/or services).

Learning Bits from the TC 'Flourishing Youth' about Positive Psychology in Youth Work

© Monica Mano 'Practicing Effective 
Ways of Memorizing Names'

This is a story about a rather unique training course 'Flourishing Youth: Positive Psychology in Youth Work' (under Erasmus+) organised by Anatta Foundation [NL]  that took place at the end of September 2017 in the Arboretum Prandi, located in a charming little Northern Italian town Sale San Giovanni. It gathered together inspiring group of people working with youth, i.e. youth workers, high school teachers, young activists and academics from Germany, Slovenia, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom (more specifically from Wales) and Italy (and a volunteer from Finland), interested to collectively explore the concept of positive psychology, exchange experiences in the youth work, present specific cases and collectively find solutions using positive psychology, create new friendships and contacts for future collaborations and much more. And here is a small overview of this exciting learning journey we took together...

'EU - To Be or Not To Be': The Big Question We Tried to Find an Answer To During an Erasmus+ Youth Exchange in Syke, Germany

'Global Village at Bremen's Central Station'
© NaturKultur e.V.

My most favourite summer activity is to attend interesting events, especially those with a strong international flair. For that matter, I had the honour to be the Dutch group leader at an international youth exchange 'EU - To Be or Not To Be' organized by NaturKultur (and thanks to Erasmus+ financial support) that took place in Syke (Bremen area), Germany from 12th to 21st June (2017). The youth exchange gathered together around 40 young people from 7 countries, namely Italy, Greece, Hungary, Romania, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Germany (plus unofficially Croatia  and Montenegro - since the project coordinator and the main facilitator Slobodan was (and still is) originally from Montenegro and the two volunteers that cooked amazing food the whole week were (and still are) Croatian. I'm not even mentioning 1 Russian, 3 Turkish and 2 Latvians (that includes me) among the participants that just majorly serves as a living proof of 'free movement in Europe' in its full action). Important to notice, the choice of participating countries for this international youth exchange was not made randomly, as the event tried to gather countries that represent both extremes - EU supporters and skeptics. So what did we learn and discuss this week? Is there a common European future? Read on to learn more...

It's Up to Me Indeed: Bits from the Training for Trainers 'It's Up to Me 3'

© Ayhan Feraset 'Getting ready for 
the group photo'

This is a story about an inspiring 7-day learning-by-doing experience that happened in a picturesque little village Diepenau, in considerably Northern part of Germany in the beginning of March 2016. I'm speaking about a training course for trainers 'It's Up to Me 3' that gathered 35 young and energetic participants from 7 countries, namely from Norway, Italy, Macedonia, Spain, Latvia, the Netherlands and Germany willing to become inspiring trainers and learn new things about trainer's realities, exchange ideas and passions, form new friendships and obtain new contacts, as well get to know committed organisations and individuals that could become their partners in developing and implementing future projects, and also learn new things about different cultures. Moreover, the cultural diversity represented in the training course was beyond the 7 countries that officially took part in this training course - as such the colorful support team consisted of individuals coming from Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, two shadow-trainers coming from Croatia and Estonia and even more colorful team of trainers coming from Romania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and even the U.S.

'Latvians Are Everywhere' by Otto Ozols: A New Face of Modern [Latvian] Literature or A Mirror of the World Today?

Source: janisroze.lv

I walk along the numerous shelves of diverse manifestations of knowledge, and stop at the shelf stating 'Latvian Literature'. So there I stand, scanning through the many new and old masterpieces of new and old wizards of domestic literature. What immediately catches my eye is the very patriotic cover of a book 'Latvians Are Everywhere' [Latvieši ir Visur] by Otto Ozols. It also states that it's a special limited edition dedicated to the country's birthday in November. As follows, this national thriller as named by some was first published in 2010. I'm intrigued, though I'm not able peak inside as it's covered in extra plastic. However, it is visible to the eye that the cover contains engraved Latvian ornaments and has four short reviews on the back cover made by publicly well-known figures, including the wizards of contemporary Latvian literature. One of the main conclusions the locally famous reviewers try to feed to the audience is that the book is like a medicine for those that have lost their feeling of national significance. The book is pricier than other books, so I have my moment of doubt whether I should spend 18 something Euros and get this 'boost of national significance'. Well, 'Latvians Are Everywhere' and they win me over, also because I'm intrigued to learn about how people describe their experiences of living abroad. However, not everything looking splendid and promising from the outside is able to keep up with the created image when extra plastic cover is removed...

Hungry for New Knowledge? Future Learning Available Today: Free Open Online Courses

© Marta Podniece 'The Postcard'

Not a long while ago I enrolled myself in an online course about Erasmus+ Funding Opportunities for Youth, which was held on a learning platform called 'Canvas Network'. However, while completing this course the whole new world of online education winked at me and triggered to dive deeper into it and explore the enormous possibilities of online education available for today's curious learner. While looking for the online opportunities to study the subjects that have caught my interest I was directed to Erasmus+ funded portal called 'Open Education Europa' [www.openeducationeuropa.eu] that serves as a network offering information on a wide range of MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses], courses, resources and institutions that contribute to this joint idea of making the connected and innovative way of learning possible. However, particularly a few learning platforms caught my eye by offering free online courses in various disciplines, namely FutureLearn [www.futurelearn.com] and iversity [https://iversity.org], and the previously mentioned Canvas Network [www.canvas.net].

I decided to explore and compare the options each of these learning platforms offer like what can you can study online, who is offering you the education and in what language, how the learning is done, how can you prove that you have studied and are these free online courses really FREE?  

The Biggest Fears of a Latvian News Reader regarding Refugees [2015]

©Gatis Šļūka 'A View on Europe Today'

As it became clear earlier, due to the refugee crisis the EU made a decision to find new homes for 60 000 refugees in its member states. Latvia as one of them also agreed to contribute to refugee crisis and in two years time accommodate 250 refugees. However, Latvian society has demonstrated different attitudes to this event, including readers of news portals. Weirdly enough refugees haven't come yet - but an opinion about them and who they are is already formed. More stereotypical than real. One of the causes for that might be the fact that despite a large protest against the coming of unknown, refugees are going to settle in Europe, and that it is already decided without public consent. Therefore the reaction of European society in some parts is very harsh. However, it does not change the fact that the information that is rotating around is rather prejudicial and stereotypical. In this matter, I did a small research in which I went on exploring the characteristic traits of the future refugees in Latvia based on posted comments by readers on news portal DELFI [www.delfi.lv] and came up with TOP 7 stereotypical characteristics of future refugees in Latvia. The results do not represent the opinion of the whole Latvian society, but is still a [great or minor, decide yourself] part of it. I hope these findings will serve as a tiny bit of a help to the people that will be dealing with integration issues in tomorrow's Europe. If not then it's just a sarcastic answer to all today's bloated and superficial fears about refugees that are intensely spread around in social media channels. Enjoy!

An Inspiring Journey of Learning: Bits from the Training Course 'Art for Community Development'

© Biljana Klisarova

It's been quite a while since the last time I attended one of these always inspiring events under Youth in Action program. I missed them. I missed the feeling of empowerment and being among the same-level crazy people that see solutions before problems, and give any at-the-first-glance crazy idea a healthy amount of soil to grow into a real initiative. Yes, you guessed right, I'm speaking about the brave change makers of the world that are sure the change can be made with their own bare hands (and minds). Maybe sometimes you just need a a little push, or sometimes you're the one that pushes someone if he/she is stuck in an ugly moment of stagnation. The training course 'Art for Community Development' gathered 28 young people from 8 countries, namely Czech Republic, Macedonia, Portugal, Spain, Latvia, France, Poland and Romania in a lovely small town Přerov in South-East Czech Republic to learn and discuss how art can help and is actually already helping to foster community development, develop new ideas for future cooperation and projects, and remind themselves and the rest of the world one simple truth 'JUST DO IT'!

Sunday 22nd. The Last One.

It's Sunday. I made myself awake at 6:30 AM and got ready for another regular trip to the work I'm not proud of doing, but still doing to provide some sort of sustainability for my livelihood? I find it important to be fed and have a roof above my head. And it's winter. Sleeping under the big blue sky is considered rather tragic than romantic at this period of the year. 

I take the first train from Nijmegen in direction to Roermond at 7:38 AM as usual, and expect my 15 minute ride also to go as usual. While I'm still in my sleeping mode I'm listening to cheerful and energizing music tracks and getting emotionally ready for my daily 10 km cycling activity to work. I think about the weather and whether the wind today blows with me or against me, as it greatly determines the longevity of my daily cycling trip to work. It also determines the level of my annoyance that greatly depends on whether the wind holds extras with it in form of rain or snow.