by Tina Lee Odinsky-Zec, 8 July 2013
‘Create awareness of social enterprise in your community by inviting them onto campus for a social marketplace, a social enterprise day event or as guest speakers in the classroom’
Zagrebacka Banka a division of UniCredit Group has organized a competition in Croatia as part of their umbrella project Moj Zaba Start. The aim of this overall project is to support a wide variety of entrepreneurial activity and they are funding this in alignment with their corporate social responsibility initiatives. The other projects are targeted at developing small crafts (My Motif), encouraging innovative ideas for youth (My Chance), green innovation (My Green Zone) and social enterprise potential (My Community).
In the Social Enterprise sector, ZABA is in partnership with NESsT and the UniCredit Foundation. The promotion was supported with a press release, press conference, articles on defining social entrepreneurship, social enterprise and sustainability through the national media channels as well as their website.
According to Andrea Rosandic, “There were 36 applicants who submitted proposals by the deadline in June and from them we have narrowed the pool down to 22 candidates whose completed applications will be further reviewed by expert advisors. The 22 will get ranked and reduced to a top 10 which will then start with due diligence process in the Fall”.
NESsT has been operating in Croatia as a foreign non-profit association since 2011. But the organization has been present in the market as early as 2005 where they began developing a research and support network for social entrepreneurship advocacy. NESsT operates in 10 countries including the Argentina, Brazil, Czech Republic, Chile, Croatia, Ecuador, Hungary, Peru, Romania, Slovakia as well as support offices in the USA and UK. Through their network they have help to fund and provide technical assistance for planning, incubation and scaling of social enterprises in over 50 countries.
In Croatia, NESsT work has supported such organizations as the Award Winning, RODA, a parents in action NGO which now launched its sister company which spun out their products business in reusable diapers and baby merchandise. NESsT and ZABA hope to build awareness and grow self-financing opportunities for community initiatives to move social agendas into sustainable long term solutions.
Related Links:
NESsT – www.nesst.org
RODA – www.roda.hr