Venetian libraries experiment as youth idea incubators

The project seeks to help entrepreneurially-minded youngsters to navigate real-life scenarios

MY.SELF is the name of a project, which will undertake to grant Venetian youngsters aged 15-29 the opportunity to test out their entrepreneurial spirit and show them what developing a business is all about. The interesting point is that the workshops will take place in city libraries – in fact, the Venice Libraries Network was the proponent of that initiative.

Venice local administration wants to help future generations to harness their potential

The project is part of the 2020-2021 Regional Youth Plan of the Municipality of Venice. As such, it will target two groups: teenagers aged between 15 and 19, and young adults, between 20 and 29.

The idea is to help these youngsters envision and plan their future in terms that stimulates their autonomous thinking and place in society. The two keywords of the initiative will thus be ‘project management’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ and the goal is to make them more comprehensible and relatable through practical workshops.

The workshops will consist of a real two-hour practical laboratory that, through group work, leads the participants to the realization of a project. And that means - starting from the prototype, all the way up to marketing the product and evaluation of its economic sustainability on the market, exploring a hypothetical relationship between costs and earnings.

Having an idea about a product or a service is wonderful as a creative process, but it is not enough to only sound good in one’s head. At some point, it needs to meet the real-life implications in a way that tests it out whether it would actually thrive out there and lead to success for its creator.

MY.SELF is thus a captivating opportunity to test one's entrepreneurial attitudes, the ability to work in a team and the intuition in designing a winning idea.

Entrepreneurial education has as its ultimate goal the activation of a path of conscious citizenship consisting of informed, free and enterprising future citizens.

The didactic offer will take place in three locations of the Venice Library Network with different calendars based on the age group involved. It will be free, subject to the availability of places.