The team of Ruse Chamber of Commerce and Industry wishes you a magical Christmas, filled with love, warmth and coziness!
May the New Year be happier, more successful and filled with health and prosperity!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

RTIK organized the first information event on 17.10.22. under the Rural GCE project - Teaching materials on Global Civic Education in rural areas.

During the event, the results of the yes now project will be presented:

• Analysis of needs, through an online questionnaire distributed in all project countries;
• A useful guide for adults;
• Handbook of Global Citizenship Education;
• Online learning environment;
• Open badges for course passed.

Various representatives of the project's target groups can take part in the event - adults living in rural areas; civil society organizations in rural areas; lecturers, teachers and members of school staff to share their experiences and get to know in detail the aims and objectives of the project.

The activities under the project "Gazelle - Stimulating the development of innovative SMEs with high potential" are financed under the INTERREG VB Balkans-Mediterranean 2014-2020 program. 

You can read more about the project here.

The network itself consists of over 110 officially certified EU|BICs (among them BIC Innobridge-Rousse) and over 30 associate members supporting 20,000+ innovative companies in more than 35 countries with 1 unifying goal: to drive better well-being through entrepreneurial innovation. Covering the full spectrum of innovation sectors and supporting continuous improvement and greater impact, the EU|BIC community works for a green, digital and fair society and the creation of high-quality and sustainable jobs. 

We remind you that "Innobridge" is still the only business innovation center for Bulgaria, officially accredited by EBN (www.ebn.eu). The initiative started as part of a project of the Rousse Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which later grew into an independent organization. This is another recognition for the Rousse Chamber, which in 2022 will be 132 years old since its establishment.

The event aims to gather in one place innovative companies with growth potential that have passed through the Accelerator Program of the project, business angels, investors and technology transfer centers from the Balkan region. The forum will give them the opportunity to make personal contact and partnerships, which would ensure support and realization of the innovative projects and ideas of the companies participating in the event. The event will include participants from Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and North Macedonia. 

In the first part of the forum, each of the innovative companies will present their project to the participating business angels, investors and technology transfer centers. The best idea will be awarded and will receive a prize package worth BGN 5,000. 

The second part of the event is intended for individual meetings between the participants and networking. 

For more information and applications, please see the attached files:

1. Invitation to participate;

2. Preliminary program;

3. Online registration or Application for participation for business angels, investors, technology transfer centers and other interested parties. 

During the business meeting, the tools for the development and support of the Bulgarian business were presented, related to the promotion of innovations, internationalization, new technologies and financing projects by the relevant institutions. Business representatives had the opportunity to directly ask the representatives of the institutions and ask specific questions or make proposals.

The event also symbolically marks 132 years since the establishment of the Rousse Chamber of Commerce, which is also its first country. RTIK Executive Director Milen Dobrev also opened a charity initiative that aims to renovate part of the Regional Library building, which was built more than 100 years ago by the Chamber of Commerce.

The activities under the project "Gazelle - Stimulating the development of innovative SMEs with high potential" are financed under the INTERREG VB Balkans-Mediterranean 2014-2020 program. 

As a member of EBN and one of the main participants from the local ecosystem in Ruse, Ruse Chamber of Commerce and Industry was chosen to join with a participant in an international expert group for the exchange of good practices in the promotion of youth entrepreneurship. This group was formed as part of the Better Incubation program ( http://betterincubation.eu/ ) and aims to survey and select best practices in supporting young entrepreneurs. In our joint work with our international partners, we found that young people are placed in a disadvantageous position compared to other entrepreneurs, which prevents the utilization of their potential to create and implement successful and innovative entrepreneurial ideas. 

Therefore, as part of the Better Incubation initiative and drawing on successful international practices, we reached out to our partners to test their applicability on local soil. The direction in which we concentrated our efforts was social entrepreneurship, the support of which has been among our priorities since 2015. 

In organizing the pilot mentoring program, we partnered with many stakeholders, but a key role was played by:  

1) BEM.BG, with whom we jointly organized the first edition of the entrepreneurial competition "Start Young" in Ruse in 2021, during which we selected some of our participants in the Better Incubation program.

2) Tsvetelin Nikolov - young entrepreneur and co-founder of Pleggi.com (https://pleggi.com), who told us what young people like him actually need. 

3) "Elias Caneti" State University of Ruse, whose management and teaching staff helped us to select the rest of the participants in the innovative mentoring program. 

Thus, although few in number, extremely motivated and capable young people participated in the program, who during the three shooting days talked about their ideas and our joint work on them in the last few months.

Better Incubation is a 2-year program (2021 – 2023) powered by the LIAISE project, funded by the European Union's Employment and Social Innovation programme. The project aims to promote inclusive and social entrepreneurship in Europe by mobilizing and empowering business support organizations (BSOs) with tools and good practices to effectively support social enterprises.

The methodology most commonly applied by European statistics[2] distinguishes two types of workforce skills mismatches:

Horizontal, in which workers are employed in jobs that do not correspond to the education they have acquired, and
Vertical, in which they are employed in jobs that require a lower qualification than that of the workers.
Both inconsistencies are undesirable, since the horizontal ones show that the structure of education supply does not correspond to the demand of the labor market, the vertical ones - that some workers are overqualified for the work they do. This information can also serve as a basis for fine-tuning the provision of education, especially by the public sector.

Horizontal mismatches in the skills of 15-34-year-olds in Bulgaria marked a slight increase in 2020. They are most visible in engineering specialties, construction and technology; this most probably reflects the differences between the profile of vocational education in many areas of the country and the structure of employment by economic activities in the region. The same is true for agriculture, where the largest discrepancies are observed, with between 60 and 70% of all those with an agricultural education employed in other activities. It is also noteworthy that despite the increased demand for ICT personnel during 2020, there was also a significant increase in the mismatch, up to 43% of people with education in the field, most likely as a result of the high concentration of high-tech jobs in the capital.

The vertical mismatch data show that 22% of all employed people between the ages of 20 and 64 are in jobs that require a lower qualification than what they hold. Of the activities for which Eurostat publishes data, the share of the overqualified among those employed in transport and trade is the highest, but with opposite trends - while in 2020 there is a significant increase in transport, there is a slight decrease in trade in the number of workers with a higher of the required qualification. There is also significant vertical disparity in construction and manufacturing.

A review of Eurostat data indicates that the Bulgarian labor market continues to face significant skills mismatch problems; the overall dimensions of the vertical and horizontal unconformities are relatively commensurate. They most often affect economic activities in which there is a relatively high demand for new workers, but also those in which there is an oversupply of education. Two problems come to the fore, the resolution of which could alleviate the discrepancies – the lack of a sufficiently strong connection between education and the labor market and the practical absence of adult education and retraining.

Author: Adrian Nikolov, Institute of Market Economy

"Training Course for Young Lawyers on Arbitration Court Matters" will be held for the sixteenth consecutive year in the period 23 March 2022 - 08 June 2022, once a week, during non-working hours in a combined format, through video conferencing, which will be carried out through the google meet platform and/or in the BTPP building: Sofia, Iskar St. No. 9, floor 1, depending on the requirements of the health authorities.

The training aims to popularize and confirm arbitration proceedings as a method for resolving commercial disputes. Particular attention is paid to the particularities of the arbitration process. Alternative methods for resolving legal disputes are also topics covered.

Additional information about the course and the registration of the participants, as well as the program, can be obtained from the website of the Chamber, section "Upcoming events - Online registration": www.bcci.bg.

 Questions can also be sent to tel.: 02 / 8117 561, 02/ 8117 546 and e-mail: acourt@bcci.bg