The demographic changes in Romania in 2015-2020 will dramatically change the labour market, causing a decrease of employees by 4,5% and raising the number of pensioners by about 13%. In this context, Romania will have to invest heavily in education and skills of the individuals active in SME development.

One solution for the effects of demographic change is the development of social entrepreneurship and encourage young people to this field is shown in the research ”Gap analyses, scope and search”, conducted under the European Program JA Social Enterprise 360, implemented by organizations from eight european countries (Belgium, Greece, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, Croatia, Romania) and co-financed by the European Union, through Erasmus+ program. The initiative intends to develop an educational curricula for social entrepreneurship, which can be used free of charge in high school.

The program is implemented Junior Achievement (JA) Romania and encourages young people to be aware of the opportunities of social entrepreneurship and start succesful social bussinesses to bring the change in their communities.

The program will begin in October 2015 with a pilot project at the Economic College Partenie Cosma Oradea, which will be later replicated in 60 high schools in the country and in other five European countries. The project will involve more than 5600 high school students and 450 teachers who will use the learning by doing method to learn to launch business projects with high social impact.

As part of the program was carried out an analysis of entrepreneurship education situation in the participating countries, a social entrepreneurship curricula, modern educational materials, case studies and an online learning platform. In addition, students and teachers involved will have access to trainings and webinars with social entrepreneurs and to local and international competitions, in which students will be mentored by volunteers from the business environment.

Solutions for reducing poverty
Unlike the classical business model, profit oriented, social entrepreneurship focuses primarly on the needs of marginalized people or social problems – such as unemployment, lack of education services, health, or environmental degradation – and contribute to solving or remedy them.
In Romania, social entrepreneurship could provide solutions to many of the population problems. Amid high unemployment, social businesses could create jobs, improving the present poverty for nearly five milion Romanians, according to the Ministry of Labor.
 
Social Business projects can represent a solution for many local entrepreneurs, especially in rural areas, which focuses almost half of the population and where 70% of people are living in poverty and without access to utilities and technology. Also, social entrepreneurship can provide several solutions for integrating disadvantaged groups such as people with no education or those with disabilities. According to statistics, in Romania are over 600.000 adults with disabilities and only 4.6% has a job.
 
The project JA Social Enterprise 360 is implemented by JA Romania in partnership with JA Europe, JA Greece, JA Italy, JA Spain, Stichting Jong Ondernemen Netherlands and The Grameen Creative Lab in Germany, Economic College Partenie Cosma Oradea and Faculty of Economics Osijek in Croatia. The project is co-financed by the European Union, Erasmus+ Projects strategic partnership for school education (Key Action 2).