Unica Radio Raccontiamo la città che cambia
Alise Jakovele comes from Carnikava, Latvia. After studying molecular biology at university, she started working in her field, although she wasn’t sure if it was the right path for her. When she was 25 years old, she went to her first Erasmus+ project in the UK. Now she calls it a life changing experience.
She enjoyed the project so much that she soon realized she also wanted to give this chance to other youngsters. So, she founded her NGO in Latvia and started organizing her own projects. A few years later, she decided she wanted to increase her organization’s capacities, so she applied for the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme. This programme offers aspiring entrepreneurs a chance to gain the necessary skills to start a small business. The participant is paired with a host organization in another country, where they work for a period of 1 to 6 months.
Currently, Alise has already spent 2 months of her Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme in Cagliari, Italy. She works with the local association TDM 2000. Here, she is mostly involved in managing two large-scale KA2 projects. One is about social entrepreneurship, and the other one is devoted to creating tools for people with sensory disabilities. She also helps organize International Summer Week 2023 – an event that gathers around 150 participants from different countries every year here in Sardinia.
About her future plans
Alise still has 4 months left of her programme, and she’s excited about what to come next. She is sure that the competencies acquired and knowledge gained during her time here will be very useful in the future. After finishing the programme, Alise has great plans to continue improving the capacities of her NGO back in Latvia. She is even thinking about creating a local youth centre back in Carnikava.
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