#INSITU, #interreginsitu #insituproject #interregcentral #cooperationiscentral
The 4th Regional Focus Group Event in the Stuttgart Region took place in March as a presentation event for the participants of the regional Training Program “Empowered by Entrepreneurship”. All regional stakeholders, workshop teachers and project partners were invited to attend. In order to present the progress of ideas, the professional and personal development of the participants and a demonstration of the program towards the stakeholders, each team was asked to present their business idea in 3 minutes on 3 slides.
Before the presentations started, Omar Fayez, Director at Social Bee gGmbH in Stuttgart, was giving a short keynote and explaining about social entrepreneurship and the purpose of Social Bee. As the Stuttgart Region Insitu partners address unemployed people of all age groups and – due to the regional specifics – extend their focus to new citizens to Stuttgart, Social Bee is a very interesting enterprise for the project. It is Germany’s first holistic diversity service provider. As a non-profit organisation, they enable the sustainable integration of refugees, people with disabilities and other disadvantaged people. They are a social business and build the bridge between employers and job seekers.
The main part of the event however were of course the trainees. They all had presentations prepared, most of them with power point, some of them only verbally and one founder even prepared a video for the occasion. The content of the presentations varied a lot: Some of them are on the brink of business foundation, some of them changed their ideas and plans within the program and came up with more suitable ideas for themselves, some of them had personal setbacks which prevented them from realising their ideas according to the original plan so far. However, all of them were and still are keen to realise their dreams, grateful for the training program and stressed the value of the network, the workshops and mentoring talks.
The organisational team of the training program, PP5+6, as well as the attending guests were very impressed by the progress all the participants made in the last months. Due to the COVID crisis all workshops had to take place on Zoom which made it much harder to organise a lively network and some inofficial exchange between all involved. This event was a great opportunity to keep each other updated and to see where there is still need for further content or guidance.
The big news at the end of the event was that the application process for the next round of the training program has started. The workshops and networking events will hit off end of April and proceed until September. The program is open for people of all age groups, already living in the region or new in Stuttgart, unemployed and future business founders, who want to reorient themselves professionally or who want to further educate themselves in the topics of social innovation and creative industries. All information can be found on the website or on Facebook: