FALKON PREST: Youth Entrepreneurship for Social Change
FALKON PREST: Youth Entrepreneurship for Social Change
FALKON PREST: Youth Entrepreneurship for Social Change
Since the creation of the LEINN degree, we have developed several projects related to youth entrepreneurship in the Social Economy
Since the creation of the degree Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation LEINN in Mondragon Unibertsitatea we have developed several projects related to youth entrepreneurship in the Social Economy. In LEINN the entrepreneurs in teams create student companies or junior associations under Social Economy formulas. The promotion of these projects has been co-financed within the Operational Program for Social Inclusion and Social Economy 2020-2023 of the European Social Fund. In this line, the JUNIORCOOP project (2016-2017) created a pilot program to accompany these junior associations during the four years of the degree; creating the germ of a launching pad for new cooperative entrepreneurial projects from the university. The results showed that around 30% of the graduates create their own companies once they finish LEINN. The IMPULSO COOP project (2018-2020) helped to articulate a program to support the formation of new business projects with a social vocation and the accompaniment of the cooperative companies that emerged from LEINN in recent years to achieve their professionalization and consolidation in the market. The process of re-invention and creation of emerging companies or start-ups from the university, beyond mere skills training, has been called FALKON in LEINN.
As a result of this experience, we were able to confirm that young people are involved in entrepreneurial projects linked to changes in society, solving social, environmental and economic problems of our environment; but when it comes to setting up the company, they do not feel close to a legal formula of social economy (such as a cooperative). Other factors such as access to financing, investors, public aid and scalability are more important when choosing the legal form of the new company.
What is FALKON PREST?
FALKON PREST (2020-2023) is a project linked to the previous projects co-financed by the European Social Fund that starts from the entrepreneurial motivation for social change of our young people and focuses on the needs set out in the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, with its Sustainable Development Goals SDGs for the formulation of new entrepreneurial projects.
In this way we will create an awareness program from the social action in which young entrepreneurs as a team start from the social need, cooperate as a team, integrate emerging and exponential technologies and generate solutions for change to problems under a logic of Social and Sustainable Economy.
Project Objectives
FALKON PREST has the following objectives:
- Create a framework of awareness towards social needs, sustainable development and the contribution of the Social Economy in its resolution.
- To train a new generation of young leaders who are creators of change that seek impact solutions to the needs of sustainable development.
- Promote the generation and incubation of entrepreneurial projects with a social vocation and a technological and sustainable component in LEINN.
Project structure and phases
LEINN and the team entrepreneurship unit where it is located - Mondragon Team Academy - work under clear methodological principles: learning by doing, working in self-managed teams, the company as a learning tool and being the protagonists of their own growth process. Considering these principles, the project has the following execution phases:
1. GERMEN: this phase starts from the people, their motivations and interests and puts them in contact with the pressing social, environmental and economic needs that society is suffering. It sows the seeds of impact leaders who will work not only for personal gain, but to achieve the common good.
2. INCUBATING: this phase consists of creating three Labs that will function as launching pads for entrepreneurial projects in three areas: (1) Fintech and Ethical Finance: companies in the technology-based finance sector that seek a triple impact, (2) Tech for good: technology-based companies that employ emerging and exponential technologies for the common good and (3) Rural Innovation: companies whose focus is to provide solutions to the challenges faced by the agricultural and rural sector.
3. DEEPENING: this phase measures the generation of results of the incubated projects, as well as the sustainable impact generated by the entrepreneurial projects in the short and medium term, until they become social economy entities.
Expected results vs. Results achieved
FALKON PREST aims to achieve the following results in the period 2020-2023:
+30 networking events and creation of new ideas.
+500 hours of mentoring
198 participants
270 business ideas analyzed
54 business projects incubated
46 Participants (unemployed or inactive) obtaining employment
6 Companies or social economy entities created from entrepreneurial projects.
As of December 2021 FALKON PREST has developed more than 20 online or hybrid events, with the attendance of more than 700 people. LEINN has launched the "We 4 All" program for the training of impact leaders, which has focused on the solution of problems related to migratory movements, climate change and diversity and inclusion. It has supported events such as Hack & Disrupt (in collaboration with BME, Bizkaia Provincial Council and BBK, among others), Gure Begirada (in collaboration with ONCE) and Rural Innovation Ecosystem RIE (in collaboration with Fundación Emplea and San Martín de Unx City Council).
FALKON PREST has incubated more than 40 entrepreneurial projects with a social vocation in LEINN and has mentored the founders of 5 small cooperative societies: LUP, D4E, TINC, BASK and ULUWATU, and 11 commercial companies (limited companies) in LEINN.
Falkon Prest is a project that not only promotes awareness among young people about sustainable development and social economy, but also connects social agents as protagonists; it seeks ideas that solve social and environmental problems and incubates viable projects led by our young people; and includes measuring the impact generated by such projects or the change produced in the perception of young people regarding their responsibility and power to change. The approach is eminently practical and results-oriented.