Fundația Danis

Annual Report

2019

2019 Highlights

193

young people


received support from Fundația Danis, through internship or entrepreneurship education programmes.
80

would-be or young entrepreneurs


were involved in entrepreneurship education or business coaching programmes.
2520

hours


of business coaching were provided to would-be or young entrepreneurs.
36867

euro


were provided as financial support or fellowships to 47 young people, young entrepreneurs or youth workers, investing in their education, professional growth, or in the development of their entrepreneurship competencies.
124

NGOs professionals & social innovators


from six European countries learned how to conduct workshops for young people on entrepreneurship and digital & media skills, and how to develop their organizational fundraising & CSR strategies.

Projects

Through Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs international coaching exchanges, we bring extraordinary people and meaningful business experiences in the lives of young entrepreneurs.


14

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs exchanges


were organized by Fundația Danis, in 2019.
15800

euro


were provided as financial allowances to the Romanian young entrepreneurs traveling abroad.

“I rebuilt my website and changed everything radically. I improved my products, I improved my marketing and managed to increase my revenue, my sales. And since I finished the program, I now have one physical location in one of the biggest shopping malls in Romania, and we closed last year with five employees. So, that’s really great!” (Bene László)

Bene László is a young entrepreneur in Romania, who founded and owns Zamir. He successfully developed his business after he participated in an Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs exchange organized by Fundația Danis. László talks about the impact that the programme had on the growth of his business.

96

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs exchanges


were organized by Fundația Danis, since 2012.

The 2019 Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs exchanges took place within “SGE-SMEs Growing in Europe” project, which is led by Cambra de Comerc, Industria i Navegació de Girona (Spain), and co-financed by the European Commission.

In 2019, trusted local partners joined us in co-financing the project. Many thanks to S.C. BM Bau Structure SRL, S.C. Hedvig Impex SRL, S.C. Cheap Tea Software SRL.


CoOp - Cooperate to Operate

63

youth workers


from Romania, Norway, Poland, Ireland and Greece developed their knowledge and skills on fundraising and CSR.

CoOp project aimed to support youth organizations to diversify their funding sources by educating them in the field of CSR & fundraising from SMEs.

In 2017-2019, together with our partners from Greece,  Ireland, Norway and Poland we:

  • Developed research-based knowledge on the SMEs’ and youth organizations’ collaboration, and on the business’ capacity to invest in youth development and education. Read the national CoOp Research Reports and the CoOp Comparative Report.

CoOp project aimed at enhancing the cooperation between SMEs and youth organizations through a collection of video stories that could motivate both sectors to collaborate more. Here is one of the video-story we developed to support the NGOs to improve their fundraising activities from SMEs.

In 2019, 25 youth workers from Romania, Norway, Poland, Ireland and Greece participated in the CoOp International Training Course, developing their knowledge and skills on fundraising and CSR: https://coop.norsensus.no/greece-training/. Once they returned home, the five youth workers from Romania reached another 38 NGOs’ staff and volunteers sharing with them knowledge and skills on how to enhance their cooperation with SMEs.

The project was co-financed by the European Commission, within Erasmus+ Programme, and Fundația Danis’ partners in this project were: Asset Tec (Greece), Youth Work Ireland (Ireland), Norsensus Mediaforum (Norway) and Fundacja Robinson Crusoe (Poland).


Skill IT for Youth

21

youth workers


from Romania, Norway, Ireland and Poland developed their skills to deliver digitally enhanced workshops on the 21st-century skills for young people.
77

young people


from Romania developed their digital and the 21st-century skills through workshops provided by youth workers trained within the Skill IT for Youth project.

The Skill IT for Youth – Integrating Digital and Future Skills into Youth Work project aimed to equip youth workers with the digital knowledge, skills and confidence to enhance young people’s future skills in the 21st Century.

In 2018-2019, together with our partners from Ireland, Norway and Poland we:

In 2019, 21 youth workers from Romania, Norway, Poland and Ireland participated in the Skill IT for Youth International Training Course, developing their knowledge and skills on delivering digitally enhanced workshops for young people: https://digipathways.io/transnational-digital-youth-work-training/. Once they returned home, the youth workers from Romania reached 77 young people, supporting them to develop skills such as creativity, critical thinking, productivity, media and information, design thinking, etc.

Here is one story of such a workshop for young people, organized by Paula Crăciun and Teodora Barbu, youth workers of the RATIO Accounting Students Association.

 

USING CRITICAL THINKING TO SPOT FAKE NEWS

The project was co-financed by the European Commission, within Erasmus+ Programme, and Fundația Danis’ partners in this project were: Youth Work Ireland (Ireland), Camara Education (Ireland), Norsensus Mediaforum (Norway) and Fundacja Robinson Crusoe (Poland).


Other Projects

Bridges to ENpower

We took YourKite project experience further, supporting the youth work sector from Ukraine, in 2017-2019. The capacity-building project “Bridges to ENpower” focused on entrepreneurship education for young people and it was supported by the EC’s Erasmus+ Programme. Our partners in this project were: Resonance Foundation (Ukraine), Fundacja Aktywnych Inicjatyw Rozwoju (Poland) and Norsensus Mediaforum (Norway). In 2019, we trained 26 youth workers and educators from Ukraine on how to deliver entrepreneurship workshops for young people and on how to organize internship programs for university students. Also, we organized in Ukraine the ENPower conference for more than 50 NGO and university representatives, promoting the entrepreneurship educational resources we developed so far within the framework of other international or local projects. During the ENpower project, we have also developed a mentorship program guide, in order to increase the capacity of the NGOs working with young people to provide valuable mentorship & internship programs for young people.

Innovation Express – Job Shadowing

Fundatia Danis and Norsensus Mediaforum (Norway)  have been working for several years with young people, developing expertise, at local, national and European level, in supporting young people to develop personally and professionally, to be more active in the community, to make their voice heard, but also to start and run their social, business or volunteer initiatives. Following our common goal to improve our work with young people, we organized the Innovation Express – a job shadowing project, which allowed us to learn, share and initiate new activities and services that develop young people’s sense of initiative, digital and future work skills, and their capacity to participate more in their communities.

The project included two job shadowing activities in which two youth workers from the partner organizations were involved with the aim of professional development and organizational growth for innovative youth work. The job shadow activities included learning objectives and specific activities, grouped in the following development areas:

  • Enhance youth employability and develop digital skills of young people;
  • Develop young people’s sense of initiative;
  • Support young people for better inclusion and expression of opinions in the community;
  • Increase the capacity building of the organizations.

Innovation Express was co-funded by the European Commission, through Erasmus+ Programme and Norwegian National Agency – Aktiv Ungdom.

Youth Media Literacy Express

During this four-day mobility project, together with our partners from Norsensus Mediaforum (Norway), we visited and met representatives of other NGOs (New Horizons Foundation, ARC, Cluj Cultural Center), “Babeș-Bolyai” University and Elf High School, in order to learn more about media and information literacy education in Romania, and about young people’s civic and social initiatives. At the end of the project, we agreed to develop two project proposals to enhance young people’s media and information literacy, respectively to support Roma young people to engage more with their local communities.

During this short project, we:

  • Strengthened the cooperation with Norsensus Mediaforum, but also built the base for other potential partnerships for the projects we will develop.
  • Learned more about media and information literacy education in Romania, both in the formal and the non-formal education sectors, and learn about the Norwegian experience in the field.
  • Explored how we can transfer the international experience we gained in media and information literacy for young people, in the current partnership projects we run with various European partners, to the Romanian context.

The mobility project was run by Norsensus Mediaforum with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Romania, programme funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the Granturi SEE & Norvegiene.

New Projects (started at the end of 2019)

MILagers – Media Information Literacy “Village” to Empower Young People for Active Participation

MILagers project aims to engage, connect and empower young people, by enhancing their media and information literacy (MIL) competencies through cross-sectorial and innovative open educational tools. In 2019-2021, together with our partners from Norway, Sweden and Bulgaria, we will improve youth work in the field of media literacy, supporting youth organizations to:

  • Support young people to develop MIL competencies in a holistic way, through a gamified platform with real-life working tasks;
  • Strengthen young people’s sense of initiative, helping them to put into practice their ideas for solving social problems, through design thinking facilitation techniques adapted to the youth sector;
  • Support young people to express their opinions through powerful storytelling techniques and influence policy-makers, decision-makers, CSOs, and other relevant stakeholders.

The project will also enhance the youth organizations’ communication and media capacity, and their capacity for designing, redesigning and co-designing user-centered services for young people, through innovative and NGO-suited design thinking and storytelling tools.

The project is co-funded by the European Commission, through Erasmus+ Programme and Norwegian National Agency – Aktiv Ungdom.

Emotional Intelligence on Labour Market (EILM)

Through the EILM project, we aim to support young adults and adults to develop their emotional intelligence and better integrate into the more and more demanding labor market.

Fundația Danis partnered in this project with companies, public agencies, and other NGOs to build innovative and up-to-date educational resources and coaching tools to support Vocational Education and Training (VET) advisors in their work with learners – young adults and adults.

In 2019-2022, we will join our effort with partners from Italy, Poland, Austria, Spain, and Bulgaria in order to reach the following goals:

  • Improve the quality of the VET advisor’s educational practice;
  • Develop innovative training resources and coaching methods to prepare VET advisors to enhance the emotional competences of their learners, especially young adults;
  • Build interactive and online tools to support learners, young adults and adults, to self-assess and improve their emotional intelligence for their employability enhancement.

The project is co-financed by the European Commission through Erasmus+ Programme through Italian National Agency – INAPP.

Social Entrepreneurship in Local Communities (SELC)

Through the SELC project, we support entrepreneurs with innovative ideas who want to develop businesses with social impact in their communities. Together with our five project partners will organize business incubation programs for 60 entrepreneurs in Romania, Italy and Cyprus, in order to improve their entrepreneurial skills.

In 2019-2021, we plan to develop business incubation models for social entrepreneurship, which will then become functional at the national level in Romania, Italy and Cyprus. With the help of our partner from Belgium, we will generate an integrated business incubation model dedicated to entrepreneurs from all over Europe.

The project is co-funded by the European Commission through Erasmus+ Programme and the Romanian National Agency – ANPCDEFP.

Financial data

Income Sources in 2019

Costs in 2019

Contact us

Photos credentials: the photos used in this report were taken by Fundația Danis team, entrepreneurs or other participants in our projects and by Norsensus Mediaforum team, during the implementation of the projects included in this report.