Reigniting the entrepreneurship spirit in Northwestern Bulgaria

Entrepreneurship is a powerful stimulus for economic growth and creation of employment. It is entrepreneurship that develops new markets, creates firms, working places, and skills. Its contribution to competitiveness and innovation is a crucial factor for achieving the European Policy objectives. In general, potential entrepreneurs face a number of challenges: education does not provide the appropriate basis for starting a new business; credits and loans are much harder to get; difficulties arise when one wants to transfer ownership to business; people fear from failure, and tedious administration procedures can discourage entrepreneurs. Even culture itself does not encourage entrepreneurship. It does not provide sufficient grounds for recognition and reward and it does not popularize examples of successful entrepreneurs, who create new working places. For entrepreneurship to become a driving force of economic growth in the Northwestern Region of Bulgaria, culture needs a permanent change. Entrepreneurship can become an attractive alternative in the poorest and least economically developed region in the EU, only when more efforts are put into its development. In this context, this project foresees a number of initiatives to promote self-employment: - information and motivation for the development of self-employment; - training people (employed and unemployed, including young people), who are willing to start their own business; - provision of training and consulting services that would help the target groups develop entrepreneurship ideas, acquire and improve the skills needed for the management of business and transform their business ideas into viable plans for the realization of a real business.

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