Our project tackles the problem of low resilience and insufficient civic engagement of people living in areas with low civic cohesion in former Sudetenland. Our vision is to find, connect and support active people in local communities to initiate or further develop their social entrepreneurial ideas. Through empowerment of local changemakers in our acceleration programme and initiation of dialogue among all community stakeholders we aim to build more resilient and sustainable communities.

Borderline areas of Czechia (former Sudetenland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland)

Our project specifically tackles the problem of lack of social entrepreneurial initiatives in former Sudetenland borderline areas. The region suffers from loss of social capital (the emigration rate is 15-20% higher in formerly German towns than Czech ones). According to Legatum Prosperity Index 2020 the region indicates a very low civic participation and engagement in social impact activities. Therefore, our project strives to detect and empower local changemakers to start the change towards development of social enterprises, creation of new jobs, retention or return of active people in the region, increase of employment and activation of the civil society sector.

The primary target group are mostly young people active in the communities who have the potential to become community leaders (or are already acting in this role) through their social innovation or social entrepreneurship activities. Our aim is to empower them via a tailor-made acceleration programme with a track record of impact to make their entrepreneurship sustainable and beneficial for their communities in the long-term. Specific focus will be aimed at youth leaders below 30 who will serve as role models for other peers to prevent further depopulation and brain drain/social capital outflow from the borderline areas. Thanks to the acceleration of social impact initiatives and involvement of local community members, the elements of Social Capital will be strengthened.

1. COMMUNITY MAPPING, COLLECTION OF STORIES AND DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE NETWORKING PLATFORM (Oct-Nov 21, platform ongoing)
1.1 We will identify local community leaders and collect their stories to prepare audiovisual testimonies and presentation of successful social entrepreneurial projects
1.2 To enable sharing of good practices and networking across different regions of former Sudetenland we will establish an online platform with a map of localities and accelerated projects, stories, videos, networking opportunities etc.

2. WORKSHOPS IN REGIONS, RECRUITMENT (Dec-Feb 22)
2.1 We will organise 10 topical workshops (20 participants each) with the aim to bring everyone to the table and share good practices of social entrepreneurship. The outcome will be a scouting pipeline of prospective community leaders as potential participants in the accelerator.
2.2 Recruitment of 10 aspiring changemakers and 10 local mentors into the 1st accelerator (same numbers will be recruited for 2nd round).

3. ACCELERATION PROGRAMME (AP) 1st Cohort (Mar-Jun 22)
4. EVALUATION AND RECRUITMENT INTO 2nd round (Jul-Aug 22)
5. AP 2nd Cohort (Sep-Nov 22)
Together with local mentors, experts and our coaches, we will run two 3-month APs providing tailor-made capacity building to 2x10 community changemakers who will accelerate their social entrepreneurship and learn how to grow community engagement.

1/ Min. 20 changemakers got their community/social entrepreneurship initiative co-created, prototyped and tested, further accelerated, developed sustainable business models and created a network of local co-workers and supporters
2/ Min. 200 community actors actively involved in dialogue through workshops in 10 localities (repres. of citizens, local government, businesses, civil society etc.)
3/ 30 motivational videos and 30 podcasts with local role models (incl. repres. of disadvantaged groups such as minorities, single parents, physically impaired people)
4/ Min. 10 local mentors actively involved into acceler. programmes to support growth of local changemakers
5/ Min. 1000 impacted local community members (each changemaker will impact around 50 people through his/her initiative)

DIRECT IMPACT
-By bringing together various actors and building a Community of Purpose for prosperous and sustainable living conditions in disadvantaged regions. Local people will be empowered to engage in dialogue with political representatives and become more active through initial workshops, presentations of local role models (videos, interviews, local meetings) and seeing positive impacts of sustainable entrepreneurship
-By empowering local changemakers who will turn their ideas into viable business models with community impact.
-By creating new jobs, volunteering opportunities and co-creating social entrepreneurship with minorities and disadvant. groups
INDIRECT IMPACT
-By validating and accelerating the viability and impact of the 2x10 participants and their respective projects

We are a team of 27 enthusiasts and professionals in many fields who truly believe that change happens if all community members are brought to the table. We started our mission in three places (Prague, Brno, Ostrava) where we are helping great ideas become sustainable entrepreneurial models which the whole community can benefit from (e.g. businesses supporting sustainable food production). Step by step we also moved to other regions such as former Sudetenland where less opportunities are available and low civic cohesion prevents growth. Some of the team members were born in Sudetenland and have personal passion for making a contribution. Selected members of the team: Petr Vítek, Markéta Pavlíková, Ivana Štefková, Vláďa Víšek, Patrik Feňuš, Lenka Krákorová, Marek Koyš, Zdenka Havrlíková.

Project coordinator (12 hrs/week, 14 months, 7420 EUR)
Community mentors (20 persons, 4600 EUR)
Coaches (20 persons, 4600 EUR)
Content specialist (platform, scripts/scenarios for videos/podcasts, interviews (12 hrs/week,14 months, 8680 EUR)
Travel costs, accommodation and subsistence for team (8400 EUR)
Space, consumables, materials for events (3450 EUR)
Online networking platform development (2000 EUR)
Graphic/technical creation videos and podcasts (6000 EUR)
PR and comms (1500 EUR)

Your feedback will be a valuable support for our team! We appreciate getting to know different perspectives and culturally-diverse approaches. It always helps us to improve our community and social impact work. Together we are stronger :)