Development of entrepreneurship in border areas

An information and presentation session for entrepreneurs and representatives of the City Administration was held in the Business Center of Kostomuksha within the framework of the project of the Cross-Border Cooperation Program “Cross-border social entrepreneurship: a startup for everyone, opportunities for everyone” “SOCCER” / KA 8002.
As part of the event, a number of meetings were held, during which the expert, acting Head of the Center for Innovations in the Social Sphere of JSC “Development Corporation of the Republic of Karelia” N.V. Bagrova presented examples of real cases of social projects successfully implemented on the territory of the Republic of Karelia. The participants of the meeting were given the opportunity to ask their questions regarding the forms of support for the successful implementation of social business ideas and to assess the compliance of their business projects with the criteria for the status of a social enterprise in accordance with Russian legislation regulating this field of activity.

The experts presented to the audience the key trends in the global development of social entrepreneurship. In the course of the subsequent training, entrepreneurs, with expert support, built trajectories for the development of their own social projects, taking into account modern world trends.

Entrepreneurs generated a number of socially significant business ideas, recognized by experts as potentially promising investment projects aimed at developing the territory of the KGO, incl. as a monotown. In this regard, the specialists of Petrozavodsk State University, as the main organizers of the event, invited interested entrepreneurs to take part in the Training “The Art of Presenting Investment Projects”, proposed within the framework of the international project of the Cross-Border Cooperation Program “Cross-Border Investment Navigator for Single-Industry Towns” CINNAMON (КА 4032) …

An important part of the event was the presentation of the All-Russian Competition “The Best Social Project of the Year – 2021”. The participants of the meeting got acquainted with the main nominations, criteria for selecting the competition, an important advantage of which is the possibility of participation in it not only for social entrepreneurs, but also for NGOs, as well as self-employed citizens. The audience was keenly interested in the proposed nominations of the competition, additional support measures for its participants and winners.

The session was moderated by M.N. Utitsyna, Project Coordinator from the Russian side, Director of the Center for Distance Education of PetrSU.

When summing up the results of the meeting, entrepreneurs and participants showed great interest in holding an additional blitz session with the participation of experts and business trainers before the end of the project for a detailed study of the cases of their business projects.