Dacorum CVS

Dacorum CVS has a staff team of 50 plus many tutors and interpreters they engage as required and a total of 180 local volunteers. The organisation turnover is £2.5 million and in the current financial year will rise to £3 million. They have the following quality standards:, Investors in Diversity, Matrix and ISO 9001.

Dacorum CVS is active in working with young people through a range of community activities, is an adult educational provider and combine this role with community development, support and services. They deliver a range of leisure and employability skills related courses and have long standing expertise in supporting NGOs to develop their capacities and capabilities, provide a range of services such as recruiting & managing volunteers, printing, payroll, equipment hire, minibus hire and advice in relation to governance, funding advice, social enterprise, income generation and practical skills.

Dacorum CVS operates a community based internet radio station, Radio Dacorum, which is used to develop the skills of volunteers as well as being an effective communication channel for local community activity and the European Projects

DCVS also runs a project called Connect Dacorum which is all around Corporate Social Responsibility ethos.  It’s bringing community groups and businesses together in exchanged of sharing opportunities and helping each other as well as providing networking opportunities for SME and large business.

FI Group

We advise companies on the management of their R&D&I financing, through the design and implementation of actions aimed at boosting their technological and economic development. These actions focused on the integral treatment of R&D&I tax incentives and the management of calls for public grants and subsidies, resulting in an improvement of the companies’ profit and loss accounts.

Our eagerness to achieve excellence in all our services has led us to assume the leadership of the sector, both at the national and European levels, thus promoting an ambitious internationalization plan with a clear objective: to help our clients in the generation of value.

Asociación CON VALORES

“Asociación CON VALORES” (ACV) is a non-profit organization working for work reintegration  & social economy. The association was born out of the experience of one of its founders, Melquiades Lozano, who worked for 20 years as a high-level business man in Spanish companies. At some point in his life, he realized that he wanted to help people at a disadvantage and he started volunteering, accompanying homeless people in the streets. During a decade of volunteering, he observed that the world of business was completely disconnected from societal issues. He then decided to take the matter into his own hands: he transformed his professional career as a business developer to become the manager of a professionalized and business-oriented organization: Asociación CON VALORES.

We are creating bridges between the business & social spheres in order to implement an inclusive approach that supports entrepreneurship for people at risk of exclusion. ACV is formed by business professionals who share their know-how in order to create a fairer society. Our mission is to use our business experiences and contacts to support new companies developed by socially excluded groups. Our business vision is crucial and fundamental to match with social organization’s needs. It allows us to identify, to generate and to boost work opportunities.

We develop tools and methodologies that support entrepreneurship among people at risk of exclusion in different contexts. In that sense, we created in 2019 an inclusive incubation model involving different business profiles: entrepreneurs, business associations, universities, technology centres, public institutions, etc. All these professionals are volunteering and bringing professional and specialized support in small businesses creation. The enterprises will then be managed by excluded people with the support of a network of high level professionals from the business sector.

Since October 2019 we have supported more than 100 new entrepreneurs with fewer opportunities and 34 new business models have been designed with the support of a community of 120 professionals. Our supportive approach is mainly based on agile and practical methodologies (Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Canvas Business model…). Our volunteers’ intervention is organized between training courses, mentoring, coaching, evaluation and feedback committees…

From 2020 we are upgrading our incubation model according COVID19 conditions and restrictions. We believe that those adaptations will allow us to define a resilient model for small businesses incubation supported by new technologies.

CSC Danilo Dolci

Centre for Creative Development “Danilo Dolci” is a non-profit organisation composed by youth and adults. Our main field of interest is education.

Our organisation born from the educational and working experience of the great pacifist Danilo Dolci and his collaborators that operated in Trappeto and Partinico, two small towns near Palermo, and in all the region of Sicily. Through popular self-analysis, nonviolent fight, meetings that involved thousands of people, it was possible to create the conditions for a real change and development. The first organisation created by Danilo and his collaborators was constituted in the 50’, the Centre for Studies and Initiatives, and its main aim was to promote the social, economic, cultural and educational development at local and regional (Sicily) level. After this centre transformed in the Centre for Creative Development that had the main aim of promote the reciprocal maeutic approach (innovative approach developed by Danilo Dolci) in schools and educational institutions and train teachers and educators in this innovative and human methodology of education. After Danilo’s dead, in 1998, the organisations becomes to be called Centre for Creative Development “Danilo Dolci”.

Nowadays the main aims of the organisation are:

• Organise maieutic workshops in schools, universities, organisations and institutions;
• Organise cultural and educational activities that promote the life and work of Danilo Dolci;
• Make that the books Danilo wrote during his life are published again and organise new anthologies that gather his most important writings;
• Organise European projects (seminars, training courses, youth exchanges, etc) that involve youth from diverse countries, about the themes of nonviolence, peace, active participation and reciprocal maieutic;
• Organise European projects in the sphere of adult education using as privileged method the reciprocal maieutic approach.

• Disseminate the life and work of Danilo Dolci;
• Promote education to children, youth and adults through the reciprocal maieutic approach;
• Promote the reciprocal maieutic approach in the school context and at international level;
• Educate for peace and nonviolence;
• Educate to group work as a tool for cultural, social and civic promotion;
• Promote active citizenship and participative democracy between youth people;
• Promote the grass root participation of all in the development.

Casa Ioana

Founded in 1995, The Casa Ioana Association is a nongovernmental organisation empowering survivors of domestic abuse and family homelessness to self-dependency.

Casa Ioana is the leading independent provider of temporary accommodation and comprehensive support in Bucharest. Activities are designed to support survivors from the time they leave their abusers to when they feel ready to move on. Providing safe accommodation and help with meals ensures a beneficiary’s physical and personal needs are met, while vital psychosocial support and help with life and job skills enable survivors to be financially independent.

Casa Ioana is different because they address the multiple underlying issues of domestic violence and family homelessness. This highly successful formula provides opportunities for families to emerge from what are desperate circumstances and begin their journey to empowerment and economic self-sufficiency.

CEED Bulgaria

Entrepreneurship is still developing in Bulgaria. Self-employment rates in Bulgaria are still the lowest in Europe at 11%; developing a more mature entrepreneurial system will be critical in maintaining and continuing economic growth. The government has developed the Action Plan Entrepreneurship 2020 to help encourage start-ups and small business growth. SMEs already play a significant role in economic growth in Bulgaria, accounting for 75% of employment outside of the financial business. Though women’s participation in entrepreneurship is lower than men; Bulgarian women enterprises show more growth than their regional counterparts. However, they represent a limited share of innovative, export-oriented businesses. More tailored support is needed for women to be more competitive in the SME space in Bulgaria.

With this context in mind, CEED Bulgaria was founded in 2005, the first center in southeast Europe. Over the years, CEED Bulgaria has organized and facilitated business discussions, specialized seminars, conferences, networking events, and meetings with multinational companies and investors for their entrepreneur members. Some highlights from over the years included hosting the 2016 CEED Global Conference in Sofia, launching projects in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to bring their SME development services into Central Asia, and leading training thousands of SME founders and employees since 2005. In 2019, the center had 390 active members, 49% of whom were women, and their programming involved 460 enterprises and entrepreneurs from the broader community.