MBR_ISSUE 41_Cover_LOW

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Malta Business Review
An Opportunity for Malta
Q&A WITH RYAN MERCIECA M.ENT, M.A., B.A.(HONS) MELIT
By George Carol
more social awareness and empowerment,
which means that youth work has much more
to add to social entrepreneurship. In addition,
often, where it exists the Entrepreneurship
in youth work is limited to one off process of
training or workshop, and in order to support
young people to develop their own business
there is a need of an ongoing support and
mentorship in order to keep their motivation;
The idea of youth work as a tool for social
entrepreneurship development often can
be seen as a two-fold process: on one hand
directed to the youth work providers aiming
to make their work effective and directly linked
with the needs of young people. As majority
of young people need jobs then youth work
providers should provide space for real and
meaningful support for young people.
MBR: Was the aim of the project reached?
RM: Yes the aim of the project was to
develop strategic tools and motivate
youth organizations to provide youth
entrepreneurship support and further
expand on this topic. Such tools were
developed in two Intellectual Outputs. The
topic is important for the wider youth work
field who will benefit from deeper and more
contextualized exploration of the role of youth
work in promotion of entrepreneurship.
Brings together different actors working on
social innovation and advocating for a more
creative Europe with a main mission to
provide fresh ideas and solutions acting as a
catalyst for positive changes across Europe
and worldwide. Our main goal is to design
innovative social projects to respond to the
persistent social and economic challenges
in order to empower people’s potential and
facilitate their active engagement in society.
MBR: Would you consider this project as
innovative to Malta?
RM: Sure, as we were aiming at producing
and transferring know how, promoting
entrepreneurial culture and enhancing the
effectiveness and viability of enterprises. All
of these are concepts that are developing and
gaining momentum in Malta.
Another innovation of this project was that
it answered the question of how much
youth work and non-formal education/
learning have managed to gain recognition
as a tool for youth entrepreneurship and
social entrepreneurship.
There is a clear and deep change in the
purpose of youth work in Europe as it is
adjusting towards young people's needs.
Due to the high unemployment, on a
European level, youth work is becoming
more visibly a tool for supporting young
people to find a job or even more
popularly to create a job themselves.
This is an addition to the more traditional
definitions of youth work where it is
seen as a tool for social and personal
development of young people.
The project is a step forward in defining the
role of youth work in social entrepreneurship
and in this line it is both innovative, as it is
focused on defining new areas of work
and development of new tools, but also
complementary to the political priorities
given to youth work and the process of youth
work recognition.
Our main goal is to design
innovative social projects to
respond to the persistent social
and economic challenges
MBR: Can you explain more the Intellectual
Outputs of the project?
RM: The first intellectual output is a
publication that is a support tool for youth
workers to mentor and stimulate Youth
Entrepreneurship in their youth organisations
and communities. It main aim is to strengthen
mentoring skills of youth workers, to be able
to fully follow a Youth Entrepreneurship
Process, from idea development to realization
and provide the necessary support for the
idea to be realized. It includes methodologies
and methods in Mentoring and Coaching
in particular on the topic of Business Idea
Development, Monitoring of Business plan,
Meaning of Entrepreneurial Leadership and
Carrier Guidance
The second intellectual output is a toolkit
will be a mainly an educational resource for
youth workers and other stakeholders. It is a
support tool for youth workers to introduce
(Social) Entrepreneurship Education and
Programmes related to Entrepreneurship in
their youth organizations and youth center.
The first part is focused as a training curricula
for educators and coaches to conduct training
and learning activities on the topic of youth
entrepreneurship. The second part will be
composed of methods and practices from
youth work and non-formal education that
youth workers can use to introduce and
stimulate entrepreneurship in youth work
activities, when working with young people
on local, national or international level. The
two of the project outputs will be a valuable
contribution to the youth field in general, as
they will be a hands on support and tool for
youth workers to promote entrepreneurship
not only on local, but also on European level.
MBR: What is the main impact of the
project?
RM: The main impact of the project is the
introduction of the non-formal youth work
approaches and reflections among the
participating youth workers so that they are
able to work on entrepreneurship education.
In this way the role of youth work in
entrepreneurship education will have higher
potential for quality approaches and will offer
space for social entrepreneurship by the
youth workers. In addition the development
of a set of tools based on peer learning and
exchange of ideas will give also a strong
impact in equipping the youth field with the
needed tools in this area.
MBR: What is the way forward?
RM: The way forward will be to
continue advocating the notion of social
entrepreneurship in Malta as we have already
a number of other initiatives in the pipeline
as well to strengthen our network with local
partners and on a European level. MBR
For more information, you can contact Ryan
Mercieca on info@ryanmercieca.com
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