Building a new generation of social entrepreneurs in the Western Balkans

RISE not only provides support for promising young entrepreneurs. It also facilitates reconciliation among young people in the Western Balkans through social entrepreneurship. 

The program has already supported 90 teams, helping some 260 young people from across the region develop their socially conscious business ideas. Participants have accessed a wide range of training, individual coaching sessions and a mentoring program. Some 24 projects were awarded with financial grants.

The program has received support from AFD, the Regional Office for Youth Cooperation (RYCO) and the Franco-German Youth Office (FGYO), in partnership with SEEYN, ARNO, Balkan Green Foundation, Nešto Više, IEC Tehnopolis, Smart Kolektiv and Yunus Social Business Balkans.

The RISE Journey, a regional support program

Through the RISE project, each local structure offers young project leaders a one-year support program divided into two parts: the ideation phase and the incubation phase.

The ideation phase aims to allow young people to develop their practical and academic skills in order to develop their ideas into a sustainable impact project. The social entrepreneurs will benefit from training and personalized monitoring by experts. At the end of the ideation phase, a presentation day is organized by the local incubators. The project leaders will present their projects to a jury, which will then select the two projects likely to create the most impact. The two selected teams will then participate in the incubation phase.

In this second stage, the teams continue to be coached, and will go through a kind of boot camp. The objective is to cultivate business skills and social entrepreneurship, while creating a regional community. The selected projects will be rewarded with a financial grant allowing them to test and validate their activity and to participate in a program to meet other social enterprises in the Western Balkans.

A new call for projects

Following the regional success of the second RISE Journey, the project continues to support impactful ideas with the launch of its new call for applications. The incubation program is looking for a new generation of young people between 18 and 35 years old from the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) willing to make a change in their communities.

To participate in the program, teams will need to demonstrate: 

• Their motivation to learn about social entrepreneurship and to get involved in a regional cross-cultural program
• Their ambition to develop a concrete idea with a social impact
• Their willingness to learn from other actors in the region

This 3rd call for projects will strengthen the regional RISE community and encourage the sharing of experiences, ideas and knowledge between generations of social entrepreneurs in the region. In this way, it aims to enrich an overall spirit of solidarity. 

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