"The ""Visually Impaired youth with Vested Autonomy – Social inclusion via social entrepreneurship"" /V.I.V.A./ was a project targeting young people with visual impairments” and in particular to facilitate their social inclusion and empowerment through the development of their leadership, entrepreneurial, and intercultural skills. The consortium is led by Ofensiva Tinerilor which has been working for and with v.i. children and young people since 2014. Part of the consortium is 1 social enterprise organization The International Council for Cultural Centers (I3C), BG, a National rehabilitation center for the blind (BG), two unions of the blind – in Iceland and Florence, a youth organization with excellent experience in working with v.i. youths – Ofensiva (RO), as well as one universities EL with experience in entrepreneurship and inter-cultural skills. The bouquet of partner organizations processes specific knowledge and expertise in the field of social inclusion, peer learning, theatre training, youth empowerment, entrepreneurship, leadership, and inter-cultural communication skills, applying different methods to combat unemployment and social exclusion of the visually impaired (v.i.) young people. The key objective of the project was to encourage v.i. young people’s active participation in society by designing, testing, and implementing a tailor-made training program for developing their social entrepreneurship, leadership, and inter-cultural communication skills. Thus, project partners created a sophisticated product to address the two main target groups’ needs (v.i. young people to become social entrepreneurs and youth workers to be provided with an innovative tool for supporting them). The project had specific interrelated objectives to be achieved: - to create an innovative social entrepreneurship training program for v.i. youths (Intellectual output) for development of their leadership, social entrepreneurship, and inter-cultural skills; - conduct one joint staff training event (C1) in order to train youth workers (a minimum of 2 representatives of each involved institution visiting Bulgaria for a shared training activity) in using the training program – to test a pilot version of the training program with a local group of v.i. young people in Bulgaria; - conduct one blended training event for groups of v.i. young people (C2) from the partner countries (a minimum of 5 v.i. participants from each country visiting Romania for 5 effective days and continuing the training with additional virtual mobility – six synchronous online sessions). This particular objective was adapted to the restrictions imposed by the COVID 19 pandemic and the C2 training took place as blended mobility. The participants in C2 becoming the V.I.V.A. pilot group of v.i. young entrepreneurs who have been trained and have tested their skills in a multicultural environment; - organize substantial multiplier events in BG, TK, IS, EL, RO, BE, and IT used for dissemination, multiplication and validation of the training programme, they all took place at the end of the project. The central tangible output of the project is the training programme on social entrepreneurship for v.i. youth including practical activities related to three main pillars: - Leadership skills – important for any young person, willing to undertake an entrepreneurial path. Leadership skills are important if a person is about to manage and empower others in connection with shared social and professional endeavors. Among other things they cover communicating, motivating, delegating, being positive, being trustworthy, being creative, providing adequate feedback, being responsible, being committed, being flexible); - Social entrepreneurship – a general set of rules, related to the development and sustaining of a social enterprise, including the practical adoption and use of the “bread in the dark” entrepreneurial experience, together with the v.i. adapted “bakers without borders game”, which provides a highly innovative and attractive view on social entrepreneurship for v.i. youths; - Inter-cultural skills – being successful in the global village requires awareness of and acquiring intercultural skills. The developed methodology is empowering young v.i. people to be autonomous and independent members of society; develop leadership, inter-cultural and social entrepreneurial skills; to support the development of young people-centred youth work and to foster active participation in society of young people. The project long term results are to raise the awareness of society towards the challenges of young visually impaired people. A network of V.I.V.A. supporters developed at the local, national and international levels to further apply and disseminate the V.I.V.A. methodology and offer youth with VI the opportunity to develop entrepreneurial models to be implemented by themselves in their communities."