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Description of project :
"INFOPRENEUR IN POSTPANDEMIC ERA" was a youth exchange that took place in Romania between 5-14 october 2022 with 32 participants and 8 group leaders
The aim of the project was to increase the entrepreneurial potential of unemployed young people and NEET for initiating and developing “green” businesses
The methodology was based on nonformal education methods including presentations, outdoor activities, entrepreneurial education etc. The project activities were preparation, introduction, getting to know eachother, role plays, simulation games, modeling, workshops in plenary and teams, outdoor activities, intercultural evenings, visits, reflection and evaluation according to agenda. We are grateful to our partners: Get Involved – Bulgaria, Praxis – Greece, Respirare Sinapsi – Italy, Young Folks – LV, VCS Sjopje – North Macedonia, AJ Intercambia – Spain and Kozder – Turkey that managed to prepare good participants and responsible group leaders even in uncertain times of Covid 19 pandemics and war in Ukraina and also managed to integrate youngsters with fewer opportunitiesunemplyed and NEET’s-who could benefit of the projects’ results.
Big thanks to our hosts “Casa cu Tei” Sarata Monteoru and “ Hotel Sport B90” Buzau who made all efforts to create a good atmospgere for working and relaxing
On behalf od Hair Redivivus – Catalina and Tolea Postovei
INTRO TO THE TOPIC
Participants had the task to prepare a documentation about situation in their region/country about infopreneurship and to discuss with the others in plenary, then in groups. In group all conclusions were at the basis of nice posters that with information and statistics showed the image at Europe’s level. There was an interesting in-put from facilitators to make everyone understand the objectives of projects and what means to be an infopreneur.
An Infopreneur’s Products
You could share your knowledge on a street corner, but no one is likely to pay you for it. To sell your knowledge, you need to package it in a form that people will want to buy. For most infopreneurs, that means a mix of:
Ebooks – An ebook is a lengthy text that provides thorough information on a subject that interests your audience. Before publishing, it’s often worth hiring a graphic designer and editor to make sure your grammar is correct and the ebook looks just right.
Tutorials – Tutorials provide step-by-step instructions on how to do something. They’re often videos, but can also be thorough blog posts that include specific instructions and helpful screen shots.
Videos – Sometimes videos are tutorials, but not always. Informational videos can take on a wide array of formats including: interviews, presentations and . Just make sure they’re entertaining and packed with valuable information for your audience.
Webinars – Webinars are similar to videos in a lot of ways, except that they’re live and interactive. You provide a presentation of valuable information over video conferencing software and take questions as you go.
Podcasts – For many information consumers, podcasts are a preferred type of content due to the ability to multitask. Your busy audience can listen to the information you have to offer through headphones while going for a run, or in the car while driving.
ERASMUS + and KEY COMPETENCES
We had a very interesting introduction about Erasmus + programme and then some participants with previous experiences told us what was happening in their projects. Miruna, Artan, Lili, Nikola, Donato, Anna that were in other exchanges in Romania shared their experiences then some of the leaders
Alexej, Daniel and Bilal took the floor to make people understand what is their role in a project.
Here are main features we discovered about Erasmus + and key competences:
ERASMUS+ budget is estimated at EUR 26.2 billion. This amount is almost double the funding received by the previous program (2014-2020).The 2021-2027 program places a strong emphasis on social inclusion, the green and digital transition, and the promotion of youth participation in democratic life.
Youthpass is a certificate that emphasizes the value of non-formal and informal learning experiences. It is based on a European Council resolution and was drafted between 2005 and 2007 on behalf of the European Commission. Unlike formal learning, which takes place in traditional educational institutions such as schools or universities, non-formal learning experiences can take place anywhere, for example in sports clubs, summer camps, exchange programs or in everyday life. . Youthpass aims to recognize and validate these experiences across Europe.
It supports the priorities and activities defined in the context of the European Education Area, the Digital Education Action Plan and the Agenda for Skills in Europe. At the same time, the program supports the European Pillar of Social Rights,implements the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 and develops the European dimension in the field of sport.
Erasmus + offers opportunities for mobility and cooperation in higher education, education and training, school education (including care and early education), adult education, youth sector and sports.
We spent 2 days to discuss and understand the key competences and to practice to get new skills, attitudes and knowledge useful for future infopreneurs and european citizens.
Key competences are those which all individuals need for personal fulfilment and development, employability, social inclusion and active citizenship. They are developed in a lifelong learning perspective, from early childhood throughout adult life, and through formal, non-formal and informal learning.
We have been put to numerous different challenges in this project to help us discover ourselves and grow as much as possible. Each of us has gained new abilities; some have learnt to work better in teams, interact with others, handle pressure, and so on; but most significantly, each of us has learned to know himself and develop as much as possible on all aspects.
We can say that everyone has gained a better understanding of key competencies. Each day began with a recap of the eight key competencies, followed by a discussion of their value in entrepreneurship. We were able to accumulate knowledge about them and practice them in a non-formal way by following numerous procedures.
Activities and methodology were so various so keep us engaged and focused on every part of it. They combined very serious working with funny moments that also generated efficient learning.
We used role plays, theater and improvisation to understand some key competences as STEM, citizenship, multilingual, literacy and tests like Kolb and Honey Mumford to discover the most appropriate ways of learning: pragmatic, reflector, activist, the
“Tolea and his team were amazing. Everything was very good with nice accommodation , good activities and important outcomes for all participants.” (Bilal – group leader Turkey)
“World café” was a new method for most of participants and jumping from one table to another where our moderators did a great job, everyone could understand the most important aspects of infopreneurship before, during and after pandemic era, strategies to be applied for safety of on line business, laws and regulations in virtual business In this world cafe, the participants learned to interact better with each other. Each with different opinions and conceptions, they learned to listen and understand the opinions of others, strengthening the relations between them. Participants divided the tasks between drawing and writing some ideas about the topic presented. In the end, everyone was satisfied and proud of the effort
What we got from our moderators:
The keys in the security and the safety of the virtual business are: to have the math and technical knowledge, to have good protected VPN, to save your data on offline pc, some people say it's better if you use Linux as an operating system, you can collaborate with other security companies, to use the order/receive/check/pay in place technique,to put tracking on your products.
In the topic virtual businesses before, during and after the pandemic we've seen a rose of online business and a big change from physic to online, we've seen that crypto currency got an "explosion" and also the delivery companies that don't activate online but all the online businesses in order to deliver they're products uses the delivery service. For the online market place the pandemic was helpful and after the pandemic "the online" maintain its level
Some tips were really main things like to make a good quality product, to promote yourself on the social medias such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and to have aesthetic and easy to work with website. There were also a small details that could help like to personalize the product, to offer more clear view of the process and even to turn on
the good senses of the clients with good smelling products. When you are in the friendly and open environment it's way easier to come up with the good ideas.
The most enjoyable session about key comeptences was the one that combined “Plot case” and “Island Game”.
In first one we were supposed to solve a problem of municipality in teams and was very tricky. E had to develop our skills in negociation, finance and planning a budget, teamwork. Some of us were real “sharks” on the market others were more flexible, but in the end, that’s how it is in real life.
Continuing to explore how to negociate in business, how to manage the risks and how to cooperate in the market, “Island game” challenged us to create an island where every member of the team should build a business. That was not so complicated but when the challenges started: invasions, explosion of volcanoes, conflicts everything become more complicated but in the end everything went smooth and visiting the other islands we could start to make businesses among our companies.
“This project was truly amazing. Through this project not only I learned about entrepreneurship and infopreneurship, but also about so many different cultures. The diversity of participant countries was excellent. This project helped me to develop my communication and teamwork skills. The activities were really helpful to see and learn about future possibilities in the field of the topic. On this project I met so many amazing people, so I’m really thankful for this experience. (Eva – LV)”
Description: each group has to invent and present using different materials(clay, balloons,coloured paper etc) their ideal infopreneur. There is almost no limitation in the type of idea, except that it is in virtual space. Each member of the group must participate, with the team deciding whether to share tasks or work on everything together.
At first, the task seemed easy because we had a lot of freedom to work. However, for the first few minutes we wondered what exactly to do. After we decided that we would create something to combine seriousity with fun and that’s what most of us did – working with pleasure, discussing about key competences and potential businesses and learn easy from a “kindergarden” method. We liked that we used some recyclable materials provided by organizers or brought from home by some participants.
In the end it did not turn out to be as easy as we thought. We had to recreate our idea in an understandable and attractive way for others. And everyone enjoyed the exhibition and presentations. Teamwork was not a problem, everyone had ideas and everyone participated in modeling. All the models seemed to be alive and they were exposed in activities
“I really enjoyed the activities and the organization of this project. I particularly liked the activity where we built the perfect infopreneur from different materials. Overall I met some amazing people and had a lot of fun on this project.” – (Ana Marija – MK)
IDEAL INFOPRENEUR – HAND CRAFT
Idea: the app for cooking
Slogan: Enjoying food better than before!!!
Main features:
● User can choose receipt for a dish or cocktail based on existing ingredients
● User can buy the absent ingredients online
● Videos explaining receipts
● User feedbacks (texts, videos, photos)
● User can share his own receipts
Storytelling:
Once upon a time, there were three roommates struggling with food. They didn’t have anything barely. Then they opened the fridge and didn’t know what to do with what they had left.
Then out of nowhere came COOKIFY !!
The Cookify.app helped them to find 4 recipes to cook something from existing ingredients.
At this time Edo was staying at home in Bolognia and trying to cook pizza. He had everything for it except the only right cheese. Cookify.app helped him to find this cheese in one of 20 online shops and order a delivery of it.
At the same time, Nieves cooked a very-very magnificent pie in Malaga on her own recipe. And she wanted to share it with everyone. Well, Cookify.app helped her to do it. Nowadays this pie named Nieves Cherry is included in the list of pies and you can enjoy it.
So… Use Cookify and enjoy food better than before!!
Target audiences
● Students
● Low mobility or old people
● People that don't know how to cook and people that are willing to learn
● Singles and busy people
● Party organizers
Resources:
● employees (what kind of specialists do we need?
● about the site and app, we need front end developers, backend ones, delivery guys, call center ones
● when second week after starting
● how much time 2 weeks for the app at most
● money (how much and when do we need it? where to get it? we need 200 000 euros, we collect them , Chefs can donate money and there recepipes
MONEY
Where is an income?
- User gets 30-days trial period
- After 30 days he pays about 4.99 euros per month
- upgrade for drink recipes +2.99 euros per month
We’d like to get starting money from the most popular crowdfunding platform - KickStarter.
Money for start (needies)
- app programming - programmers
- starting promotion
- collecting recipes for the start database (about …. recipes) - editors / old books
- establishing of first contacts with products providers (marketing people)
Monthly fees after start:
- programmers - supporting existing app and adding new features
- system administration - for servers support
- editors - adding new recipes and video reviews, editing UCG
- marketing - contacts with products providers
PEOPLE
People (human resources & company structure)
- CEO
- Tech department (programmers and system administrator)
- Marketing department (for promotion and work with ingredient sellers)
- content department (to work with recipes,
- financial (bookkeepers etc)
- customer support
MARKETING
One important thing before you start to do something is a marketing research. You have to know your audience. One of the way how to do it - simple survey as a set of interviews. For example, your audience are students. Then you go to campus and ask them some questions.
Answers on these questions will help you to understand you client, minimize your risks if you have wrong ideas, make some important decisions related to your product and understand the advantages and disadvantages to promote it properly.
We took a little survey for our Cookify application too.
Survey questions:
1. How often do you find yourself in a situation not knowing what to cook with the ingredients you have at home?
2. How often do you go to restaurants usually?
3. How often do you find yourself without a basic ingredient for your meal? What do you do in this case?
4. Do you prefer quick unhealthy meals or taking 20 minutes in doing a homemade healthy meal?
5. Do you like to share the results of your work with other people?
“In this project I’ve learned that people will learn things and connect with each other if you do it in the most fun way. I had a lot of fun especially when me and my team had to do the final workteam and by that I mean creating our company and our video. The work connected us which it was very surprising cause our team was really random and before that we didn’t even talked to each other, but at the end of the project we were closer than we ever expected.” ( Miruna – RO)
Idea Explanation
MONTEORU TRENDS
Our business idea is making keychains with NFC chips inside. The purpose of these devices is to stop using paper-made business cards or more generally presentation cards which will help stop killing trees and making a lot of trash in the streets. With touching the chip by a NFC compliant device, it automatically takes you to the website with all the informations setted in place from the keychain holder (like address of the business, email, phone number etc.) without no limits of space, as it is instead on traditional cards. These keychains will provide facilitating professional connections, creating better and more reliable job opportunities.
Montero Trends (www.monterotrends.com)
Resources Needed
Human Resources: 10 programmers, 1 social media manager, 1 content creator, 1 accountant, 1 3D designer, 1 3D printer operator, 1 graphic designer, 2 shippers, 2 packaging workers, 1 sales manager
Materials:
Once:10 3D printers
Monthly: 15kg recicled PLA, 5000 NFC chips, 5000 keychains
Financial:
Once: 30.000€ for printers
Monthly: 2000€ salaries, 300€ recycled PLA, 500€ keychains, 10.000€ packaging, 10.000€ E-chips NFC
Our customers will be from the age of 16-60, male and female. These keychains can be bought from companies as well that buy keychains for their workers to promote their company.
Our marketing will be on social media(TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc). We'll post content every day on all these platforms. On TikTok we'll post videos of how the keychain is made(we'll be able to have content every day because we'll be making keychains everyday)
On Instagram we'll post pictures of all the different keychains we'll make every day (all of them will have different designs because they're custom made. They can give ideas to the next customers about how they want to design them etc ) and edited posts with good feedback from our customers. On Instagram we'll also use the promotion option where you can promote your post and story so it can reach more people and more people can find out about our business and we'll post engagement stories daily and lives once a week so we can connect with our customers
Our main risks would be competitors. We would have to worry about not putting the price too high, to make better quality, more unique products, and give better offers.
“It was a nice project. For my team, it was something different because they have never experienced something like this. They spent a great time during the project, interacting and meeting new people from different countries which helped us learning new things about their cultures. Also the activities were very helpful to improve some of our skills that we can use in our job or in our daily routine. Taking everything into consideration, the project was well organised and all the participants from my team are thinking of going again in a similar exchange.” ( Velis – group leader Greece)
Commercial Strategy
SCHOOL FOR TOMORROW Idea
Our Company will open a place/an office for teenagers. We take care about education and we will have unformal studies; for example, we will have different clubs psychological clases, mental health club, bussines clubs because nowadays, curricular schools is boring for Young people.
We will fulfill the need for expertise personnel in several business áreas while providing at the same time extra chances to interested teenagers.
Our initiative will make more prepared people for opening businesses that will fill the society needs and also we can change teenagers mindset about education. Our office will make the teenagers prepared to open more competent businesses that will also make profit and will replace the non useful businesses that already exist on the business field
Logo and slogan
Storytelling of our idea
There was a group of people and they wanted to go on holidays to Hawaii. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough money, since they were unemployed, despite the fact that they have a university degree.
Companies wouldn’t hire them because they are inexperienced. So, they did a lot of seminars and voluntary work by themselves in order to get employed and finally go to holidays together.
After a lot of work they managed it. During the holidays, while in the beach somebody had the idea of helping teenagers not to face the same problem with them.
But problems will always appear in many aspects of our lives so they decided to expand the field of the Company not only to business help but also psychological support, mental wellness, etc.
Resources and comercial strategy
We will hire one of the top entrepreneur from different countries like: Italy, Sweden, USA, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and China.
Our Company is for teenagers form 16 to 25 years (men and women) and they have to study in economical colleges for example that study marketing or economic things.
About location, our office will be in Amsterdan, Netherlands.
Our strategy will be get money from an European Union program for start. Then pay our contributions in Company shares and get money from selling a percentage of our Company to sponsors.
Facebook did this in its beginning. So, sponsors and clients need our success in order to get their inverted money back.
We will totally give a 10-20% of our Company and we will equaly divide the rest amongst the funders
SGN:SelfGrowthNetwork
“5 people, form different countries, that never met each other before, gathered at Sarata-Monteoru at the 5th of October of the year 2022.
They needed an idea to change the future of their countries and the whole world at the same time. They wanted to create an easily accesible platform that would allow each and every person on the globe help each other.
But how would 5 people change the world? With our business plan. SGN”
SGN: Our business plan is the creation of a digital network that Will provide information on how to know on each and every aspecto of human nature. The needs that will be covered by Self Growth Network are divided in 5+1 categories:
Sports
Formal Education
Cooking Courses
Economics
Life-Coach Activity
Freelancer´s Exclusivity -> Because everybody can be an infopreneur
It will also motivate people to become the best versión of themselves and it will increase their curiosity on expending their personal horizons. SGN will help people with not that much free time achieve it will make working from home easy, trustable and fast.
Caracterize your resources (human, material, financial)
Howmanypeopledoyouneed?Whatresourcesdoyouneed(materials,finance)?
Human resources:
We are going to need 15 people for creating the web page and to maintain it. We are going to need a deal with a digital marketing agency torun the network and the advertising.
Materials resources:
A headquarters office is also essential.
Financial resources:
Costs estimation:
50.000$ for creating the platform.
5.000$ for yearly maintenance.
50.000$ will go to the digital marketing agency every year for running the platform.
25.000$ annually for advertising.
19.000$ will be the rent of the headquarters office.
Total Estimated Cost: 50.000$ + 5.000$ + 50.000$ + 25.000$ + 19.000$ = 149.000$
So, we are looking to get a loan from a bank around 200.000$ and anual interest les tan 2%. We will have pay off the loan in approximately 7 years.
Build your commercial strategy:
The great thing about our company is that it targets everyone, Young and old, men and women, basically everyone who is willing to better themselves in any way.
It doesn´t matter if you are a young man that wants to learn basics of economics or an old grandma that wants to learn a recipe on how to make cookies to her grandchildren, you can find everything you need on our network.
When it comes to the management of the company, the digital marketing agency in cooperation with the headquarters will make the company as efficient as possible.
About the marketing plan, all that SGN needs is social media advertising and search engine optimization. We will need SEO because learnwords.com and cornerstone.com are quite famous and it won´t be easy competing with these companies.
And of course, there are many risks when creating a new company. Competition is a hard one, not being able to pay off the loan in time is also quite stressful. Lastly, cooperation with the digital marketing agency should be flawless, otherwise running successfully the platform will be a hard timing to do.
“Accomodation was awesome, activities were perfect, serious and funny, especially in the forest, the tasks which every group did were pretty good and a lot of ideas were born. Also we met new friends and established strong connections.” (Alex – BG)
