ENTRi is a unique capacity building programme that was initiated in early 2011. Currently the project is in its third cycle, lasting until 2019. The main focus lies on the preparation and training of civilians that are either going to, or already working in, crisis management missions worldwide. ENTRi consists of 12 partners, led by German Center for Peace Operations (ZIF) from Berlin. All 12 partners will be represented at the meeting, held at Jable Castle between 29 and 31 May.
Welcome address to the meeting will be delivered by Ms Sabina R. Stadler, Director-General for Multilateral Affairs, Development Cooperation and International Law at Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. Participants will also be greeted by CEP Executive Director Dr Gorazd Justinek and Project Manager Ivana Boštjančič Pulko. In the light of Slovenia’s plans to establish its own International Peace Operations Training Centre for military, police and civilian personnel, the first part of the meeting will also be devoted to exchange of experience and lessons learnt among different international training providers and the representatives of Slovenia’s Ministry of Defence and Ministry of the Interior.
Empowering BiH’s and Kosovo’s Young Entrepreneurs is a region-wide project that supports the young entrepreneurs and youngsters with a promising start-up idea on their way to the development of the idea and launch of their own start-up company. Watch the video about the project!
Centre for European Perspective hosted a group of young entrepreneurs for a three-day training in the field of entrepreneurship and transfer of good practices from Slovenia. The participants visited Maribor, Jable Castle and Ljubljana and had a chance to get to know Slovenian entrepreneurial ecosystem and existing start-up initiatives.
The project is part of the CEP program activities financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the scope of international development cooperation.
The Young BSF, an integral part of the Bled Strategic Forum, traditionally held in the days preceding the Forum, has become a unique meeting place for a diverse array of young leaders, entrepreneurs, bloggers, thinkers and socially active individuals, offering them a platform to share their visions, exchange ideas and network with one another throughout the year. The Young BSF is organised jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Centre for European Perspective.
Each year Young BSF gathers young people, who engage in vibrant dialogues on current most pressing issues, address inventive approaches in promoting positive change and finding solutions to the many complex challenges.
The Young BSF model is growing and changing annually. The topics have varied and ideas evolved, but the main objective remained clear: to bring together bold, brave and action-oriented individuals from different walks of life, both foreigners and Slovenians, and offers them a collaborative, creative, and inspiring environment for discussion and networking.
This year’s Young BSF will be held on 2 – 4 September 2017 under the title “The (Dis)connected Reality” addressing the three E-s of today globalized world – electronics, environment and economy. The three main topics will be further examined through the main panels: Electronics: the future of people in the land of robots?, Environment: No flow, no go?, and The Virtual Reality of Economy and the Real Sector.
The Young BSF departs from the simple, yet exciting perspective: “We live in interesting and turbulent times. A prominent Slovenian novelist Bartol would say that nothing is real and everything is allowed. The realities of our physical world seem to be completely disconnected with the reality that we are trying to live, the virtual reality where all our wishes seem to be possible.”
The 2017 Young BSF will give visionary young leaders an opportunity to form real, connected or virtual partnerships and networks. This goal-oriented forum will seek to prompt discussions and create synergies of different ideas, turning them into connected or disconnected realities of and for everyone. Read more about Young BSF here.
In the framework of the project ‘Assistance to Albanian municipalities in the preparation of the EU and other international projects’ between 23 and 26 May 2017 Centre for European Perspective (CEP) will conduct the second workshop in Tirana. The workshop is continuation of the first workshop that was held in April in Albanian Vlora. Same participants will continue with the preparation of their project ideas.
In the four weeks that have passed since the first workshop the participants prepared a logical frameworks for their project ideas. The logical frameworks were submitted to the trainers who have checked them and will continue to work on them with the participants next week. The main objective of the second workshop is that each group of participants prepare an outline of the project proposal that could successfully compete on a concrete call.
CEP is preparinga training in cooperation with the Balkan Center for Cooperation and Development (BCCD), the American development agency USAID and the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Tirana.
The project is part of the CEP program activities financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the scope of international development cooperation.
Centre for European Perspective has made a step towards enhanced cooperation among young Danube experts in Maribor, between 10th and 12th May 2017. Young and potential entrepreneurs were invited to international conference PODIM that shows a great example of multi-level governance – cooperation of municipality, state and private sector that share a common goal.
PODIM conference is a leading start-up conference in Alps-Adriatic region that has been first time organized 37 years ago! In this time, it developed from a smaller entrepreneurial conference to leading gathering in the region. It shows how actors from various fields and levels can work together and reach much more than they ever could alone.
CEP as PA10 coordinator hosted 20 young entrepreneurs from ten Danube countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Montenegro, Serbia, Moldova and Ukraine). They were selected on the basis of the PODIM Challenge call that initially received 131 entrepreneurial ideas. Young entrepreneurs had to present their idea, team and business plan. Among over 200 start-ups from the Danube region and wider, four teams (from Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine) got into the semi-finals where 20 best start-up ideas pitched in front of the experts and investors. Slovakian start-up – Unigraph & Ingen.io that developed a layer of artificial intelligence to analyse texts and understanding, based on internal knowledge graph, which stores information about each facility in the world in which we live – got into finals and was voted as second best in the PODIM challenge.
Participants had a chance to listen to the inspiring and content-rich speeches and workshops, delivered by serial start-uppers, investors, initiators from all four corners of the world. They met with the investors through one-on-one meetings, they widened their horizons at the consulting and coaching sessions and discussed their ideas with the young people with a similar entrepreneurial mind-set. At the same time they had opportunity to meet Slovenian national start-up organization as a facilitator of cooperation within Slovenia, municipality representatives as well as various stake-holders from private and public sectors.
The time has come to announce the 12th Bled Strategic Forum that will be taking place on 4 and 5 September 2017 under the title “New Reality”. The forum is organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia and Centre for European Perspective.
The world is rapidly changing, with globalisation and digitalisation significantly increasing the pace of our lives and bringing us closer together than ever before, as well as presenting profound challenges to our self-perception, politics, the economy, security, and society. Established political, economic and social elites are losing ground. Populist, nationalist and extremist movements are on the rise. It is difficult to keep up with the vast amount of information that bombards us daily, let alone evaluate its true value or meaning and put it in a proper context. Such challenges of the new reality we live in will be addressed through the panel discussions, round tables and one-on-one interviews at this year’s conference in the idyllic environment of Bled, Slovenia.
The leading conference in Central and South East Europe that provides the needed high-level platform for discussing pressing regional and global issues brings forth also the questions of the role of the business sector, big corporations and small businesses and the challenges of the younger generation in their aspirations for the better future. Therefore, the forum also incorporates the Business BSF, addressing the topic of “Innovating New Reality” and Young BSF, taking place on 1-3 September 2017, tackling the “(Dis)connected Reality”.
Attracting some one thousand participants, including heads of state and government, ministers, diplomats, businesspeople, scholars and the media from around the world, the Forum is a unique opportunity for bilateral and multilateral meetings with the foremost regional and global stakeholders and offers the possibility of extensive networking among political and business leaders of today.
We are excited to share some further details about the conference in the weeks to follow – stay tuned via our website, Facebook and Twitter.
Photo courtesy of Tourist Information Center (TIC) Bled, Bled Tourist Association.
