Written by Pietro Curatola
President and Founder Association JUMP – Youth on the Move
15/06/2021
The association Jump – Gioventù in riSalto of Soverato (CZ) is the sole representative of Italy within the partnership of the Erasmus project “CI-You: Circular economy youth leaders”, a strategic partnership action in the youth field, approved in Brussels in 2021, with the ambitious objective of training future entrepreneurs in the circular economy sector.
The project envisages a comparison between 8 organisations from 8 different European and non-European countries on the state of the art of the circular economy as a policy and practice, on the skills needed to become entrepreneurs in this new emerging and in line with the European “Green Deal”, of which Italy is one of the leaders, and to detect the training needs of the under-30s, who face a difficult time today in terms of training and employment.
The pandemic has changed everything, upset world balances, and the issue of youth entrepreneurship is once again a priority, especially in a land like Calabria, where JUMP was established in 2012 to bring precisely internationalisation and new skills, involving above all young people and European educators. https://www.associazionejump.it/
CI-YOU, of which JUMP created the official website, https://circulareconomyproject.org/ involves partners who are very active in the field of European projects:
Out of the Box International (Belgium)
JUMP (Italy)
CSI (Cyprus)
IED and AKMI (Greece )
IMRO (Hungary)
EDUFONS (Serbia)
MIITR (Slovenia)
As the first phase of the project, which began only in April 2021, the project leaders worked throughout the summer on questionnaires administered to young people 18-30 and experts (university professors of business and economics, entrepreneurs and trainers) to produce a report that will be the first so-called “intellectual product”: “A-State-Of-The-Art Analysis For The Conceptualisation Of The “Circular Economy Business Model”. A unique document that brings together the real and current snapshot of the “circular economy” theme in the countries represented by the partner organisations, a mapping of practices and the result of the survey collected by interviewing 120 young Europeans and 40 experts, also from outside Europe.
The project continues from September, planning the next steps towards the creation of a final online training platform, free and open especially to young people, without borders and barriers, as a result of a winning partnership that, for the first time, sees Calabria in Europe for a sustainable and green future.