Success stories

Galilaia Giannopoulou is a long-time entrepreneur. She created The Hives project, a non-governmental organisation whose aim is to promote green energy, permaculture, sustainability, cultural heritage and alternative education. She signed up for the programme to expand the theme of her non-profit organisation and work with NE to expand the non-profit activities with locals and Europeans and also develop the profitable activities. Ralitsa Oleva is a young entrepreneur from Bulgaria. She has an MSc in Civil Engineering and has worked in Bulgarian and international construction companies designing and constructing buildings and solar plants around the world. Her desire for a more sustainable way of life led her to the decision to start her own environmental NGO. She enrolled in the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme because she wanted to learn from someone else's experience how to start and successfully run an NGO.

Galilaia helped Ralitsa learn more about setting up and running a non-governmental organisation and the difficulties that an entrepreneur can encounter along the way. Ralitsa had the opportunity to experiment with building with natural materials, optimising the planning of a guesthouse and developing strategies to optimise workflows. Ralitsa gained experience in supervising ongoing projects

Galilaia has benefited most from having a supervisor who works closely with the other team members, providing mentoring to the volunteers and bringing new ideas to the team. A good relationship was built that could prove useful for future collaborations. Ralitsa benefited from being in close contact with the stages and experiences that a similar NGO goes through and learning from the host entrepreneur's expertise and experience on how to structure and run an NGO. Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs gave Ralitsa a real taste of running an NGO.