SE-HUB: Empowering change makers: Youth social entrepreneurship and social innovations in the civic sector

Youth organizations in the EU, Africa, and Latin America operate in rapidly changing social environments and civic sectors. Even in the EU, where they typically function well, the ongoing economic crisis and urgent social challenges hinder public policies from preventing the marginalization of vulnerable social groups. In Africa, economic, social, and political institutions, such as governments, markets, and companies, often fail to meet the basic needs and rights of people or neglect large segments of the population.

Many youth leaders are highly motivated to improve society and believe they can achieve this through the civic sector. However, advocacy and charitable activities in the civic sector are also evolving. Social issues are becoming increasingly difficult to address, and many traditionally operating non-profit organizations often prove ineffective due to cumbersome, institutional, donor-dependent, and self-serving operational models. Social innovations and risks, non-profits adopting business strategies, social cooperative enterprises, and community entrepreneurship are emerging as new trends in the 21st-century civic sector. These forms are often collectively referred to as “social entrepreneurship.”

This new trend blurs the traditional boundaries between the public, private, and civic sectors. It is variable, insufficiently researched, and confusing for many youth organizations. Although they believe they should encourage youth leaders to pursue the new path of “social entrepreneurship,” they lack adequate theoretical and practical foundations for effective capacity building. The SE-HUB project is devised as a collaborative initiative of six organizations with different profiles from three continents, aimed at developing appropriate methods for working with youth, identifying good practices, and creating accessible training materials for capacity-building activities in social entrepreneurship.