Over 160 business ideas have been supported over the past 10 years by the Trust for Social Achievement Foundation under the project "Revolving Funds for Sustainable Economic Independence of Disadvantaged Communities". On June 28 ???, a strategic meeting of the project partners was held, which provides tangible assets to people from communities to create or expand their small business. The model was created by Prof. Ivan Penov from the Plovdiv Foundation "Earth – a source of income" and effectively increases income generation and encourages entrepreneurship through agricultural and non-agricultural initiatives.
The TSA team, the team of the Earth – Source of Income Foundation, as well as the partner organizations from Kyustendil, Vratsa, Stara Zagora, Rakitovo and Yambol discussed the main challenges in implementing the model, gave ideas for its improvement and outlined leading directions for advocacy in microbusinesses in the coming years. Entrepreneurship is of particular importance for vulnerable communities, as research shows that the share of people from the Roma community who are interested and willing to do business alone are within about 9% of those living in neighborhoods with compact Roma population and 18% of those living in neighborhoods with mixed populations.
78% of all supported businesses continue their activities to this day, thus creating more than 300 new jobs.