Good practice:

Support and development of social enterprise

Social enterprise "Bee", was established in Hayredin, the region with the highest unemployment in Bulgaria. The Project has the goal to provide opportunities for professional qualification and to encourage the full inclusion of the Roma in the local community through the creation of jobs in the beekeeping industry by training people from vulnerable groups all about beekeeping, researching the honey market. The first integrating step was to provide occupation and build self-confidence in people’s abilities to cater for themselves and see how the results of their work benefit the society. The idea came from “Nov Pat Association”, which grew into a leading NGO in the EU’s poorest region in the recent five years. The association participated in a number of social assistance programs and is one of the few teams in Bulgaria who efficiently prove the significance of social entrepreneurship and social innovations for the development and integration of vulnerable groups in spite of the non-existent regular and sustainable support from the government. During the project, a total of 40 people were engaged in project activities, using the 75 new beehives 12 of them were trained for the beekeeper profession.

139 873.00 BGN

Throughout the duration of the project, numerous people started working in the social sphere, one social enterprise was established, in which 15 target group members were trained to be professional beekeepers. 20 social services providers were trained, 5 people were trained to conduct market researches and a total of 12 people passed the final exam to gain the professional qualification for the “Beekeeper” profession.

Given the fact how important it is both for the nature, and how rewarding it might be for the people, beekeeping is a great skill to be taught to people from vulnerable groups. Beekeeping will make for an incredibly effective social enterprise no matter where it is established. The process from building the beehives, to populating them with bees, caring for them, and finally collecting, processing and selling the honey and different honey products can engage many people with different kinds of non- physically intensive, but yet, rewarding and fulfilling labour. The importance of beekeeping for the future of our planet and the fact that it is not popular enough in the recent years makes it a very competitive skill for people to have. All the abovementioned qualities of the beekeeping skill make it a great thing to be taught to socially vulnerable groups of people, no matter of the country it is implemented in.