Design Thinking training for young social entrepreneurs

Within the RISE project, in the period from 5th to 7th of June, ARNO organized training for young social entrepreneurs to get acquainted with the concept of design thinking. A total of 20 young people from each part of the country participated in interactive sessions held at the youth center “Maticno” in the municipality of Center in Skopje.

Design thinking is a relatively new concept that is difficult to translate into Macedonian, but it is a methodology that offers social entrepreneurs tools on how to think like designers, how to collaborate and how to innovate.

What happened during the training? Implemented: a series of creative exercises (4 random words, 6 thinking hats, brainstorming), short lectures (Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship through the Alphabet, introduction to Design Thinking, business canvas model session for social green entrepreneurs), a one-day innovation (hackathon for green social business ideas), energizers and privilege games, empathy games (The other’s shoe), team building activities (Spaghetti Tower) and a panel with successful RISE social entrepreneurs (Marija Burgieva O-Krug, Kamelija Kostovska -SWAP).

What will happen after the training? All participants are invited to apply with their ideas in the new RISE Journey which is expected to start in the middle of September. According to the completed evaluations, the participants say that they are inspired and motivated to apply the acquired knowledge and to cooperate in new initiatives. On the last day of the training, the method of 6 hats was used for anonymous evaluation and thus the organizers had an insight into the most creative moments (green hat), what facts/knowledge the participants gained (white hat), and so on.