A series of rural startups from Belarus will get the chance to put their ideas into action with EU support, after being selected at the fourth Startup Weekend in the village of Kamarova, near Minsk, earlier this month.
At the Startup Weekend event, business ideas were presented by residents of Miadziel, Astraviec, Smarhoń and Pastavy districts, who had been trained at the EU-supported School of Rural Business in Kamarova from January to April 2018.
A jury consisting of representatives of local authorities, business and Belarusian and foreign public organisations decided on the entrepreneurial initiatives that will receive financial support of between €2,000 and €10,000 from an EU-funded rural development project.
The initiatives selected for funding range from a family enterprise producing educational wooden toys to a husband and wife raising cattle, a roadside café making pancakes and an orthopaedic shoe repair workshop.
The next Startup Weekend will be held in July and businesspeople from the four districts are again invited to present their business plans, even if they did not attend the School of Rural Business in Kamarova.
As part of its EU4Business initiative, the EU also supports regional development in Belarus through the ‘Local Economic Development in Belarus’ project, which supports participatory local development and entrepreneurship in Belarus, with the aim of enhancing local growth and competitiveness, while at the same time addressing social vulnerabilities.
