Experience shows that the youth has the most innovative, fresh and ambitious business and start up ideas. But being young, they might feel quite lost on where to start, how to develop their ideas, and learn some tips and tricks. During different projects we experienced that participants lock their potential to be leaders and try to hide it. Usually this happens because of the lack of self-confidence, self-esteem and experience.
Youth organizations have a mission to help the youth, guide and empower them and this field is one of the main ones that they could use some help with. Having this all in our mind, we decided to create this project called “Startup battle”. Our aim with this project is to touch upon topics like leadership, European citizenship and unemployment. We will gather 25 participants and 6 leaders from Denmark, Italy, Armenia, Slovakia and Ukraine to foster youth, who has startup and business ideas, leadership skills but don’t know how to present it, how to share it with the community, how to do a fundraising and don’t know how to do the first steps. Nowadays we need young leaders in our society and we need to support them.
The APV for this project took place in Yerevan from the 6th to the 9th of October. The purpose of the APV was to clarify the profile of the participants, adjust the project according to the needs of the partner countries, discuss the agenda of the Youth Exchange in order to provide possibly the most productive, comfortable and smooth experience for the participants.
For a good collaboration we need to have a good team dynamics, so we got to know each other through team building games, ice breakers and a mini NGO fair to make sure that everyone gets to learn more about the other partner organizations and hopefully this would result in new collaborations, ideas and projects.
Fortunately enough the first day of our APV fell on the day of the grand opening of WCIT: the largest IT Congress for innovators and entrepreneurs, taking place in Yerevan, Armenia in 2019. The leaders who had arrived by then got to enjoy the colorful and creative concert dedicated to the opening ceremony.
Afterwards, the hustle and bustle of the APV continued and we checked out the venue in Tsakhadzor, which was approved unanimously.
Our guests had the chance to explore Armenia, see the “Saghmosavank” monastery complex, Ashtarak canyon, interact with local people, experience the culture and most importantly try our delicious cuisine. They were mostly impressed by the beauty of our blue-eyed jewel Sevan. All of them were excited to come back for the actual project in April.
All of us are looking forward to the project and the fulfillment of the goals we set for ourselves while writing it.
