BUSY: Business for Youngsters (KA4022)

The BUSY project is undertaken to reinforce capacity building of youth entrepreneurs and self-employed people to start businesses across the border. The idea is to find creative solutions that can provide young people with the opportunities to develop professionally while staying in the region. And one of the possible solutions here is to develop a cross-border start-up sector.

Project news

BUSY is going to provide a direct channel of introduction for start-up teams to pitching trainings, start-up bootcamps and entrepreneurship conferences to ensure a high-quality professional training, networking and exposure to mentors, facilitators and a pool of investors to help participating project start-ups and individual young entrepreneurs to grow and develop their businesses consciously and with confidence across the border.

Partners
  • Karelian regional youth Center 
  • Oulu University of Applied Sciences
  • The City of Oulu, BusinessOulu
  • The Karelian regional institute of continuous professional education (KRICPE) at Petrozavodsk State University
  • Development Corporation of the Republic of Karelia
our approach
  • Encouraging and mobilizing the start-ups, SMEs and youth entrepreneurs to work across the border:

- Map start up initiatives, networks, projects at both sides of the border;
- Run matching and networking sessions, team-building events; and
- Run an information campaign and visibility actions.

  • Designing and tuning policy and delivery methods supporting youth start-ups and SMEs in the border areas:

- Identify and analyze the challenges and problems faced by young entrepreneurs and SMEs in the border areas;
- Run comparative analysis of the barriers faced to business creation and self-employment both sides;
- Compile a report on youth entrepreneurship and its potential in the cross-border areas;
- Produce the road map with the policy recommendations and best practices for regional / local decision-makers; and
- Develop and test practical methods for policy design and delivery supporting youth start-ups and SMEs.

  • Strengthening the support services for youth start-ups and SMEs willing to work across the border:

- Create a modern and fully equipped co-working space available for young entrepreneurs as well as start-up teams;
- Provide mentoring services from experts in a certain business fields similar to the start-ups in question;
- Enhance incubating services for start-ups willing to work across the border;
- Synchronize / network / tune support services for SMEs in order to reach higher cross-border impact; and
- Enable support services' specialists to provide assistance to SMEs with a special focus on cross-border potential.

  • Capacity building for young entrepreneurs and SMEs:

- Develop educational resources; and
- Organize educational events for young start-ups and SMEs

  • Transferring the best practices in connecting the start-ups and youth SMEs to the financial resources:

- Coach on investment and fundraising activities (pitching practices, crowdfunding, fundraising);
- Organize business idea competitions as a method of generating interest and engaging youth in cross border entrepreneurship;
- Participation of CB start-ups in Startup Weekends and other hackathons run by Business Kitchen and Oamk Labs; and
- Present min. 3 cross-border start-ups at such international events such as Polar Bear Pitching

 

Project manager (Karelian regional youth Center ):

Elena Kharcheva

ElenaKharcheva@gmail.com, +7 953 548 26 95

Project coordinator (Karelian regional youth Center): 

Liana Vaguzenkova

lianavaguzenkova@yandex.ru, +7 911 416 52 12  

Local coordinator (Oulu University of Applied Sciences):

Arttu-Pekka Johannes Tavia

Arttu-Pekka.Tavia@oamk.fi