Social impact investment could be a natural opportunity for any type of investment in the near future according to the experts that were present at the Finance4SocialChange final conference, which was held on 24th and 25th of November in Budapest. That is why the F4SC project partners from the 12 partner countries developed a Social Impact Investment Strategy in the Danube region. Its transferability and sustainability were discussed in details during the conference and it is expected that its implementation will lead to positive impact not only on entrepreneurs but on the society as a whole.

Sofia Development Association (SDA) team in the face of Denitsa Lozanova, Sevdalina Voynova, Sanya Raeva and Albena Nacheva took part in all panel discussions and contributed to the event. Moreover, the expert Veronika Manova from Sofia Municipal Council presented the municipal program “The crisis as an opportunity” managed by SDA in support of SMEs affected by the pandemic.
In the last 3 years, the F4SC partners organized over 120 workshops that led to the successful development of the Strategy. Another great achievement of the project was the AIR business plan competition which gave social entrepreneurs from 12 countries the opportunity to win an investment, provided by UniCredit. The competition was accompanied by transnational AIRMOOC training program and local mentoring program.

Sofia Development Association is glad to share that all of the beneficiaries of the AIR mentoring program in Bulgaria found it useful not only for the finals of the competition but for any future investment opportunities in general. Blazhka Dimitrova, one of the beneficiaries of the Bulgarian program was present at the conference. She pitched her business idea and shared the experience of being mentee in the Bulgarian mentoring program. “The knowledge gained during the program is not only useful, but transferable and I am still applying it to new opportunities. The networking sessions gave added value of the whole process, the contacts we made during the program keep on developing… like a snowball… we definitely became more competitive!“ she said.

Our “secret” is that we evaluated the investment readiness of the enterprises before developing the concept of the mentoring program with practitioners from the field. That is the only way to support the development of an enterprise efficiently. The needs of the enterprises depend on their stage of development, they are individual and we are proud that we managed to meet them thoroughly. Our biggest goal was to help the entrepreneurs to further develop their enterprises – mission accomplished!

The project "Finances4SocialChange" is co-financed by European Union funds (ERDF, IPA, ENI).