Research

Sailing through Pilsen with(out) a compass

This research was made by youth entrepreneur group from different countries: the Czech Republic, Croatia, Macedonia, Turkey, Lithuania, Spain and Hungary. We worked in three groups; each could have freely decided to choose their way.

We had interviewed 36 people in Pilsen. They were from different countries, such as Germany, Italy, Turkey, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and also from Prague and other places in the Czech Republic, not only from Pilsen.

When we asked them if they have ever heard about social entrepreneurship, 7 of their answers were positive. After that we were really curious where they had heard about it. We got so many different answers like from their job, university, company, social projects, people around and friends.

They told us that their experience about it comes from university projects by visiting cafes, non-profit organizations, and student initiatives. Just a few people believed that problems about society can be changed, but not everybody. It depends on individuals.

Most of them didn’t know at all what social entrepreneurship is. Some of them said that people must be more open-minded and have a different approach. When we asked about other problems, they said there are ethnic and discrimination ones, and unemployment, addictions, drunk people, rubbish on the streets, at nights especially.

Just a few of them said that there are no problems at all. Regarding to the problems, they identified that there was one solution about unemployment, and that is to reduce the black market. Most of them didn’t have any ideas about solution of these problems and they also said that they didn’t care about it.

To conclude it, we have noticed that people we interviewed don’t know much about social entrepreneurship because people may not be actively involved in social activities in the city. Finally, if new social enterprises appear in society, people will be more involved and have more opportunities to collaborate with them, and thus change the main problems.