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Supporting new business ideas: this is the aim of “Yes I Start Up”.
The project of the national Microcredit Agency presented this morning in Padua City Hall and will be developed in collaboration with the training service of Ascom Confcommercio of Padua.
The data is worrying: in Italy there was a drop of 350 thousand self-employed in the third quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2019. This means that the drive to “do business” must be rekindled with all possible means, both in terms of training and credit.
This is the aim of ‘Yes I Start Up’, a project supported by the Ente Nazionale Microcredito (ENM) and created to stimulate and support the self-entrepreneurship of neet (young people who do not study and do not work), women and the long-term unemployed.
It is a targeted training course, which helps startuppers to assess the validity and effectiveness of their business idea, supporting them in the drafting of the business plan and finally promoting access to funding from the SELFIEmployment fund managed by Invitalia.
A project of European relevance that the Authority is presenting all over Italy through local meetings and that, in Padua, makes use of the collaboration of the training service of Ascom Servizi SpA, a company of Ascom Confcommercio of padua.
The presentation, which took place in the Paladin Hall of the Municipality of Padua, was attended (partly in person and partly remotely) by a large number of guests and speakers.
After the greeting of ENM President Mario Baccini, who emphasised that the Yes I start up project has proved to be a useful and credible proposal for the financial education of young women and unemployed people even during the pandemic, speeches were given by the Regional Councillor for Economic Development Roberto Marcato; the Councillor for Commerce of the Municipality of Padua Antonio Bressa; the President of Unioncamere Veneto Mario Pozza; the President of Confcommercio Veneto and Ascom Padua Patrizio Bertin and Federico Barbierato, Mayor of Abano terme.
For Marcato, who recalled the Region’s commitment and the investments made to support the economic system in these months of great difficulty, in addition to aid to promote new entrepreneurship, which is certainly useful, the energy issue also needs to be resolved; for Bressa, the Municipality’s commitment has tried to overcome the many difficulties encountered by businesses during the pandemic.
This theme was also taken up by the Mayor of Abano Terme, Federico Barbierato, while Mario Pozza, President of Unioncamere Veneto, pointed out that the fact that the Chamber of Commerce had been deprived of the possibility of registering start-ups without going through a notary is an objective limitation.
The desire to do business,- said Patrizio Bertin, President of Confcommercio Veneto and Ascom Padua, – is in our DNA, so it is a good thing if this can be supported by targeted measures.
More technical and aimed at explaining how to access the project, were the speeches by Nicola Patrizi, coordinator of the National Microcredit Agency; Daniela Patuzzi, head of the Employment Service Unit 1 of Invitalia; Giancarlo Proietto, Operational Manager of the National Microcredit Agency; Mario Crepet,Territorial Microcredit Agent in Veneto and finally Guido Milan, course lecturer.
The Yes I Start Up project has already been recognised as “best practice” by the European Union and is currently the subject of a case study by the OECD.
The aim is to spread and make people understand the usefulness of a project that, since its launch in mid-2018, has already involved more than 3,500 neet, women and long-term unemployed people, with extremely encouraging results.
The free Yes I Start Up courses, lasting 80 hours divided into 18 days of 5 hours that take less than 35 days, are aimed at obtaining zero-interest and collateral-free financing of up to EUR 50,000 from Invitalia’s SELFIEmployment fund.
A few numbers: for the first experimental phase of the three-year period 2018-2020, dedicated only to neets, 60% of those enrolled completed the course, reaching the point of formulating the request for a contribution, and 40% were actually financed. Encouraging data, especially considering the difficult socio-economic context caused by the outbreak of the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic.
Now we’re off to padua.
Video link presented interviews, today’s FB live video, photos and communiqué prepared by Ascom together with us at Ente Nazionale per il Microcredito. The communiqué had already been sent to your colleagues. At the end there is also a short report by the NS President of Ente Nazionale per il Microcredito (Mario Baccini).
The Yes I start up project proved to be a useful and credible proposal for the financial education of young women and the unemployed. Even during the pandemic, it continued to bear fruit thanks to its usability through the digitalisation of processes. An example of how resilience and recovery coexist for the economic support of the country. Statistics show that young millennials have clear ideas and a desire to start their own business. With the microfinance tools provided by the National Microcredit Board, including Yes I Start Up, we can offer a training and business opportunity. The commitment shown today by the municipality of Padua, which has believed in this activity from the outset, is the measure of a synergistic action between the State and the territory that wants to strongly support economic development and tools for active employment policies – said Mario Baccini, President of the National Microcredit Board at the meeting promoted by the Municipality of Padua, commenting on the excellent results of the YISU programme, which since the beginning of the year has already seen the application of 300 women.
