Promotion of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Rural Area of Kavala, Drama, Smolyan and Blagoevgrad

Acronym	PEIRA
Project Number – MIS	5073388
Priority axis	1 - A Competitive and Innovative Cross-Border Area
Investment priorities	3a - Promoting entrepreneurship, in particular by facilitating the economic exploitation of new ideas and fostering the creation of new firms, including through business incubators
Intervention fields	066. Advanced support services for SMEs and groups of SMEs (including management, marketing and design services)
Call	6th CALL FOR PROJECT PROPOSALS
Lead Beneficiary	KAVALA DEVELOPMENT S.A. - DEVELOPMENT AGENCY OF MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES S.A.
Beneficiaries	DRAMA DEVELOPMENT S.A. - DEVELOPMENT AGENCY OF MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES S.A. LOCAL ACTION GROUP – GOTSE DELCHEV - GARMEN - HADZHIDIMOVO Regional Center for vocational education training to CCI – Blagoevgrad
Start Date	Apr 13, 2021
End Date	Oct 30, 2023
Budget	657.282,43 €
ERDF Contribution	558.690,07 €
National Contribution	98.592,36 €

The main objective of the project is to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in the rural rea of Kavala, Drama, Smolyan and Blagoevgrad by motivating, training and providing the necessary tools to rural entrepreneurs. This will be achieved through the establishment of 4 Rural Business Support Units (RBSU), which will capitalize the PBs’ experience and other assets in order to enhance rural areas’ new and existing entrepreneurship. The idea is to provide consulting, training, workshops, an innovation lab, an on-line consulting tool etc. as an integrated support, utilizing experienced consultants’ know-how in order to supply them practical and easy to use knowledge (original approach as it covers real business needs to support micro-entrepreneurship). The Project’s implementation is based on CB cooperation since RBSU’s will be delivering common consultation, tools and other services, which will also be developed jointly. Project’s outputs will help to raise rural areas’ business awareness and inform the general public about the project's opportunities. Moreover, local and regional policy instruments will be developed and communicated to all relevant stakeholders and local, regional and even national policy makers to adopt them in national legislation, an approach that adds great value to the project outputs. In the long term, the project shall focus on creating self-contained, well-informed, skilled and start-to-think entrepreneurs who can contribute on rural areas’ entrepreneurship and increase the added value of their products or services.