Greeting the first week of spring in Latvia, project partners from Italy, Spain and Estonia came together on 12th of April 2018 for the first kick-off meeting in Ķekava’s Youth Initiative Centre (JIC) to discuss the development of project, as well as take a look on space that is going to integrate both youth centre and coworking concepts.

“Promotion of key competences of youth by coworking concept approach in youth centres” is Erasmus+ Strategic partnership project, which gathers coworking spaces Forwardspace (Estonia), Sende (Spain) and Viaindustriae (Italy), youth centre Ķekavas JIC and NGO Sociālās inovācijas centrs (Latvia) and promotes the integration of coworking elements as improvement of professional and social competences of young people.

Coworking spaces are being launched rapidly during the last decade, as they form collaborative working and learning environments for creatives, managers, distant workers, students, startups and simply curious young people around the world. The concept of coworking space can be applied to urban and rural environments, universities and cafeterias, management offices and craftsmen workshops, private business ideas and municipal youth centres, so why not to try out one?

The overall objective of the project is to introduce coworking concept to the youth centres in the rural areas and hence stimulate entrepreneurship and educational opportunities of youth through coworking concept.

Although, this is the first meeting of project partners in person, fruitful work has already been done in terms of development of first project component: guideline document for youth organisations with best cases of coworking spaces in rural and small towns is already half way done. Together with recommendations from project partners on how to integrate coworking elements into youth centres and experience of Ķekava’s JIC piloting coworking space (estimated start from September 2018), document will be distributed to youth organisations, NGOs, youth education centres and other stakeholders in all partner countries.

The next stage of project development is integration of coworking centre into Ķekavas JIC according to developed guidelines and piloting it. In order to ensure effective mentoring of partner organisations, that successfully run coworkings spaces in Spain, Italy and Estonia, 3 more partnership meetings will be organised in these coworkings to observe and overtake good experience from each of the partner. One dissemination event will be organised in Latvia in the end of the project.

Project partners:

Ķekavas novada Jaunatnes iniciatīvu centrs (leading organisation), Latvia;

Sociālās inovācijas centrs, Latvia;

Forwardspace, Estonia;

Asociacion Cultural Sende, Spain;

Viaindustriae, Italy.

Project duration: 31st of January, 2018 – 30 of January, 2019 with possible prolongation to 31^st of March, 2019