The purpose of Maximising Cultural Heritage: Educating and Growing (MCHEG) is to maximise the social, economic and educational value of European cultural heritage. The project aims to do this through sharing best practices and using ICT to help business educators to grow the cultural sector and include a diverse and wide range of people in its development.All the organisations in MCHEG are involved in educating individuals and organisations to start up and develop mainstream businesses, social enterprises, and other types of organisations through running classes, courses and workshops. All organisations believe business and social business has the power to help maximise the value of the cultural sector but must also be socially inclusive to do this. MCHEG's objectives were to: - Share best practices around business and enterprise education for cultural heritage organisations and startups. - Look at how cultural heritage can contribute to employment and economic growth and transfer strategies and learning for doing so. - Consider and improve the use of ICT and its application by business and enterprise support organisations. - Look at how we can support others to reach disadvantaged learners and people through ICT strategies. - Increase partner's capacity to operate at a transnational level, share and confront ideas and methods - Look into how educators can help adult learners to start up and grow businesses in the cultural sector. - Improve our use of ICT / digital learning to reach more learners and particularly the disadvantaged in doing this. During the 12 months project there were three main steps in the project activities: - Research and discussion in all the partners' countries of business education to support cultural heritage. - The 5 day training provides a learning platform for business educators to be better equiped to maximise cultural value. - Dissemination of resultsEuropean cultural heritage has great economic and social value - its contribution to job creation, economic growth and social cohesion is well documented (Europe 2020). Materahub are an organisation that are leading in Europe in regard to boosting and transforming the cultural sector and demonstrating the value of European cultural heritage through their education programmes and in turn supporting job creation and economic growth. Along with others in Matera, they have transformed the city from poverty such that the city's transformation through cultural heritage is sometimes known as 'the miracle of Matera'. In 2019 Matera is the European Capital of Culture and this project aimed to take advantage of this high quality learning opportunity to piggyback on this wave of interest and allow Avilys and Red Ochre to learn from Materahub and also share their experiences the other way. Together we learnt new participatory and intercultural approaches to heritage, saw examples of organisations that have benefited from effective business start up and development education in the sector and expanded our skills and competences. All of this meant the organisations involved - as educators themselves - are much better able to design and deliver courses, workshops and programmes for entrepreneurship and organisational education that works with cultural heritage in the future. On a scale of 1(not very)-5(very much), we found that:- Everyone (6 very much) agreed that they had learnt best practices around maximising value through enterprise education.- As a result of the project every single participant said that they had (9 people very much) learnt something new that will help learners to startup and grow businesses in the cultural sector in the future.The added value of of the training was also that it allowed us:- To upgrade our working methodologies, and make contacts with other realities across Europe. For example, the cultural heritage model canvass, mentoring circles, entrepreneurial circles, tips for communications in cultural heritage, marketing, how to engage learners through a long term 10 year vision and how to do it in small bite sized online offerings.Eight out of nine rated themselves as 5 out of 5 (with one, four) for the extent to which the project has helped them to upgrade their working methodologies and that they can use in their own training and education work. Similarly, everyone said that they had learnt more (8 very much, one a lot) about how cultural heritage can contribute to employment and economic growth. We found that the personal aspect of the programme was a revelation and allowed us to effectively share our practice together and make plans for future work. We have already shared results with an Indonesian social entrepreneurship centre, various national enterprise agencies in Lithuania, in social enterprise trainings in London and Matera and others are using our knowledge. We hope to work together again in the future.

Upcycling 4 Youth is a project aiming to empower the young people by training them how to use upcycling as a method for gaining self-confidence and sense of usefulness (use the newly gained techniques to create upcycled art and useful items and take part in initiatives for environmental protection and improvement) leading them to become active citizens in their community. At the same time we want to introduce and promote social entrepreneurship and green businesses among young people as a productive and creative way of finding employment or becoming self-employed. Our target group are youth aged 16-18 learning in high schools as well as youth aged 20-25 that are unemployed graduated young people willing to learn creative techniques to become self-employed. Part of them are youth with fewer opportunities facing geographical or economic obstacles. One of the specific priorities of the strategic partnerships in the field of education, training and youth, with accent on youth, is promoting empowerment, participation and the active citizenship of young people. With this project we have created strategies and methods for effective empowerment and motivation of the young people to start environmental creative initiatives, to express their opinion, be active citizens and influence on the local and regional decision makers for making healthy living environment. Working together with our partners and shareholders, we will have created effective and interactive training curricula for the young people.Willing to boost a wider-territory research on the existing upcycling techniques and experiences, applicable for starting-up a green job that include upcycling, it is necessary to work on transnational level. Involved young people have learnt how to use old and recycled items and turn them in useful furniture, art or indoor and outdoor decoration items. We have selected 8 young people from Macedonia and 5 from London, UK , falling in our target group age, to participate in the blended mobility in London, UK in the period 09-14 March 2020. Upon completing the youth mobility, they have been involved in online peer to peer learning, experiences sharing and raising awareness on the upcycling as approach for improving the environment and create economic benefits. For assuring better dissemination, to reach and include large number of young people, visually demonstrate the effects and possibilities of the upcycling, we have created project website (www.upcycling4youth.eu), project FB page and YouTube channel, we have organised 7 info days, 5 local upcycling workshops, 1 workshop for youth activism and have participated in many local and national activities for providing better visibility of the project. During the project implementation we have created the following intellectual outcomes: 1. Training on upcycling techniques and youth activism, composed of 6 modules with multiple lessons and video materials/tutorials 2. Let's upcycle - interactive web-platform for e-learning, creativity and experiences sharing Regarding the participating organisations and individuals in the project, there has been shown increased capacity, professionalism and quality in the preparation and implementation of EU and international projects, international collaboration, competences for creation of professional and effective curricula and training programs. The impact on the young people and relevant stakeholders has been created by raising their awareness regarding environmental issues, including the damage of the constant creation of illegal dumping grounds, change their way of thinking and acting, more active participation in the society, increased sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, especially interest for green and social entrepreneurship. Resulting in better living standard, creation of employment and lower youth unemployment rate.

Social enterprise in business should not only address the many social and environmental issues in the world but also be self-sustainable. This leads to many challenges for charity organizations to develop an innovative approach to solving the wide variety of social problems in society. We already see in Western Europe how social enterprise provides a successful tool for solving problems in rural areas like unemployment, lack of public services, other social and environmental issues while also being self-sustaining. However, in Lithuania and Latvia this idea is at its very initial stages. In these counties we are starting to see a significant move in creating social enterprise national concepts and policies. Currently all major events are concentrated in capitals. The problem is that in smaller regions these activities do not have any major effect. While young people generate many creative ideas to grow social enterprise in rural areas, they lack some essential competences needed for practical implementation. Therefore, this does not help create a space where the concept of social enterprise is well understood as tool for all country development in the Baltic region. The aim of this project is:- To build concept of social enterprise at practical level by motivating and empowering young people as well creating a space for their ideas and creativity while increasing their knowledge on how to start and grow sustainable social enterprises.Objectives:- To spread ideas of social entrepreneurship in rural areas.- To provide necessary competences and empower young people to develop social enterprise at the regional, national and international levels.- To assist young people in discovering their innovative and creative thinking.- Suggest innovative solutions to the problem of unemployed young people by helping them to create working places themselves and the same time create added social or environmental value for society.- To encourage the cooperation of young people and share experiences.- To adopt and create the best methodologies to assist young people grow and mature self-sustaining social entrepreneurship.- To involve good practice from international partners to assist in contributing to sustainable development of social entrepreneurship in the European Union.Project „Making good deeds profitable” requires 2 years of investment and will involve 140 young people. Our youth will have chance to become involved in project activities and learn how social enterprise is created and how it’s developed into sustainable business organizations that create added value to society. The project will by run by three partner organizations from the UK, Latvia and Lithuania. The first two organization from the UK is focused on sharing good practices within the European context, and providing the best up-to-date methodologies and know how. The organizations in Latvia and Latvia will work more on practical level directly with the young people in project. The project aims to create three main, long term tools to help ensure the implementation of social entrepreneurship in Lithuania and Latvia at practical level: - To provide a methodology from other countries while implementing solutions that will be geared towards the unique environments in Latvia and Lithuania. - To initiate activities of social cooperative amongst our youth - a very popular concept in the UK. Taking ideas that worked in other countries should help to start new enterprises in Latvia and Lithuania while also spreading ideas of community good and synergy.- To create an international platform for Lithuanian and Latvian social enterprises with the main goal to increase the visibility of social enterprises. Social enterprises in Lithuania and Latvia can provide goods and services from social enterprises from an international e-store and inform society around the world about good causes outside their country.Tools created in the frame of this project will potentially create a long term impact for implementing the concept of social entrepreneurship in Latvia and Lithuania.