---
title: "Green Genesis Startup"
slug: green-genesis-startup
type: project
kicker: "project № 02 · 2022–2024 · lead"
accent: green
pills:
  - closed
  - 2022–2024
  - Erasmus+ KA220-YOU
  - €205,144
  - lead
role: "lead"
order: 2
summary: "Green entrepreneurship for European youth. Five-partner consortium."
---

The first Erasmus+ KA220-YOU we coordinated. €205,144. Two years. Five partners across Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Spain, and Croatia. Closed January 2024.

## what it was

A cooperation partnership in the youth field, with uzinaduzina as lead and five partners across Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Spain, and Croatia. The theme: green entrepreneurship as a concrete possibility for European young people, beyond the abstract rhetoric of the “circular economy”. How they go from idea to startup. How they integrate sustainability values into a business model. How they avoid suffocating in financial jargon.

## why it mattered

For us, this was the threshold project: the first time we coordinated a European grant of this size. Until then we had been beneficiaries, partners, observers. Here we kept the secretariat, signed the contracts, coordinated reporting, mediated between partners. It was an accelerated course in consortium management.

For the young participants, the project opened a conversation rare in their environment: that sustainability is not a constraint that lowers your profitability, but a constraint which, taken on from the start, redefines what success means.

## what we did

- Built the consortium of five partners.
- Coordinated reporting and financial flows over two years.
- Workshops and capacity-building activities with young people from six countries.
- Educational materials and guides for green entrepreneurship.
- Transnational meetings (Cluj, Paphos, Athens, and other locations).
- Dissemination in partner communities.

## what we learned

Three things.

First: being lead forces you to become a diplomat. Five organisations, five working cultures, five rhythms, five levels of rigour. The most precious lesson was that *coordination is not control*; it is the construction of a frame within which each partner contributes what they do best.

Second: a large budget is not a gift; it is an administrative burden. €205,144 means timesheets, eligibility checks, bookkeeping, and many unpaid hours. We prepared the next application with much more attention to the reporting layer.

Third: the partnership with [CCIF Cyprus](partner-ccif) proved fertile. It became the first strategic relationship we consolidated across four further projects. Good partners are kept.

## numbers

- **Budget:** €205,144
- **Duration:** 24 months
- **Partners:** five (CO-LABORY Italy, CCIF Cyprus, Innovation Hive Greece, ACD La Hoya Spain, Udruga Murtila Croatia)
- **Countries:** six
- **Young people directly involved:** dozens (exact figure in the final report)

## materials

- Final Erasmus+ report, submitted January 2024.
- Educational materials produced by the consortium.
- Photo archive from transnational meetings.

## read alongside

- [Drops of Sustainable Development](project-drops-sustainable-development): the second KA220 as lead, this time on adult education.
- [CCIF Cyprus](partner-ccif): a continuous strategic partner.
- [Manifesto: explicitly pro-European; responsibility toward the future](manifesto)