On the 14th of June, Gain&Sustain:europe in cooperation with the project partners organised the BEST Final Conference. The Conference was organised in hybrid format: over 50 participants took part on-line via Zoom, while project partners travelled to Graz to participate in situ. It was a very emotional event, since it was the first face-to-face event since the outbreak of the Covid-19. The participants had the opportunity to participate in several interesting sessions led by experts and project partners.
The event was moderated in an entertaining way by Rudi Wetzl from Social Business Hub Styria who also introduced to the audience the BEST results achieved during the last 2 years. The most impressive impact has been achieved by training 243 participants in the BEST Social Business Modelling courses whereof 10% already founded their own social business. Furthermore, 216 trainers in adult/ youth education were reached through the Train-the -Trainer Courses held online with participants coming from 4 continents. An inspiring keynote was given by Mr. Francesco Fusaro from European Commission about the future perspectives and new priorities of the AMIF- programme. In 4 break- out session led by the different partner countries of the BEST diverse topics such as Business Coaching for Migrants, Migrant Entrepreneurship in EU as mission possible, migration trends and sustainable partnership building between public and private sector were interactively discussed with the participants. Parallelly Ms. Karin Hofmann was performing a graphic recording to visualize the key aspects and main outcomes of the session which was really fascinating to witness. After a short e- coffee break the conference continued by focusing on the future endeavours and sustainability. Anastasiia Yakush from X23 delivered a presentation on a great initiate named ME4Change Coalition with the aim to capitalize on the results of different migrant entrepreneurship support projects throughout the EU. The BEST results of the co- creation Hackathon organized in May by IMPACT Hub Zagreb and CMS were presented as a pitch- the Migrapreneurs project has high potential and will be further accelerated and supported by project partners. Green transition in social entrepreneurship as well as divers and inclusion in business were the topics of the last interactive sessions hosted by Helena Habdija and Laura Kozub from Jamba- a great and successful example of a social business start up supported within the BEST framework. Marta Ribas Romeu closed the event with a passionate speech giving thanks to all the contributors and partners and encouraging the development of further cooperation projects in the near future. The most inspiring stories of BEST migrant entrepreneurs were presented in short videos that can be found in this page.
