Why we started this project
In Wattrelos, no young entrepreneurship initiatives existed. The young beneficied from activities and services such as extra-learning time but nothing related to entrepreneurship or more globally related to empowerment.
Entrepreneurship also isn't really promoted in the secondary schools in the neighbourhood.
Some organisation are specialized on entrepreneurship but most of the youngsters don’t know these organisations or don’t feel confident enough to go there.
What we did
We started a hub in the municipality of Wattrelos , near to Centre Social de la Mousserie and a kind of mall.
The youngsters work on their business during two months. They start different pop-up as gardening, painting (see picture), car-wash, help to the person, etc.
Young people learn how to organise and run their own business. Any profit they make they can keep for themselves.
What the project means for young people
Hamza is a young boy, full of dreams and ambitions and difficulties. He was good at school but when he got his Bac (High school degree), he didn’t know what to do : “What can I do now ? Do I really have skills ?”. He tried to go to university but didn’t like the experience, in the same time as a young boy without experience he didn’t find a job and end up at the Mission Locale. During this process, even if he’s smart he lost his self confidence and got into NEETs tools totally non adapted for him. However he’s interested in several thing such as sport, personal development etc.
When Speed You Up came to Wattrelos, Samad, a partner from Mission Locale introduced us to Hamza who got excited for the project.
He was a part of our hub, got trained through entrepreneurship modules and tried activities !
Now, he sees entrepreneurship as interesting alternative for his future and really want to go further in that path. He’s thinking on his own project and feel much more confident about him, his skills and abilities !
That’s his and our speed you success up story !
"Ça permet de s’ouvrir à l’extérieur en contribuant au monde. Ça donne une idée pour septembre, de mettre des objectifs en place et d’avancer. C’est passé vite, c'était très amusant."
one of the participants
These are the main stakeholders for our community hub:
The municipality of Wattrelos, it provides support to our youngsters and promote the hub in the city.
À petit pas, a business incubator. It trained our coaches to entrepreneurship and also provide us all administrative and legal aspect for creating our cooperative.
Mission locale, an organization - related to youth employment. It helps engage young people.
BGE, an organization specialised on entrepreneurship. It offers workshop on enterprises’ creation and entrepreneurship.
Wei-ji School, organization related to youth support. Vanessa proposes workshop on well-being and self- esteem for the youngsters.
Wattrelos Young Cooperative
Ten young people collaborated in a temporary business.
- The young people were trained during one week called “semaine d’intégration”.
- Then they were divided into groups (committee : finance, marketing and human resources). Inside those groups they were trained to finance or marketing or HR and start the real business management. For example, about financial plan, they agreed that a % of each activity will go the committees and then to the youngsters. The HR was in charge of the timetable and human division. The marketing committee was in charge of business development and looking for potential customers.
- Before starting their pop-ups, the youngsters tried their activities with the coaches in line to propose quality services for customers.
