New Entrepreneur (NE)
Name & surname: Krystyna Stawicka
Country: Poland
Age: 32 years
Sector of activity: Education, training services
Did you already start your business? No.
Name of business: Nomad Café
What is your future business? I would love to run a small family cafe with my partner – NOMAD CAFE. We would like to start as a traveling coffee house on wheels. I want it to be a place of learning, relaxation, and inspiration. I want to bring joy and appreciation of life to our customers. We will have coffees, teas, herbs, healthy sweets, and small vegetarian meals that will be tasty and nutritious.
Host Entrepreneur (HE)
Name & surname: Victoria Carreras
Country: Spain
Sector of activity: Co-Working, Social Entrepreneurship
Experience in running a business: 10 years
Name of business/website: Anda CoWork / www.andacowork.com
What is your business? In an amazing location in the center of Granada, we offer a shared coworking space where you can work, register your business, have meetings, or organize your events.
Period of exchange: 04/02/2020 – 30/03/2020
Duration of exchange: 2 months
How did Victoria Carreras develop a long-lasting partnership with a New Entrepreneur from Poland?
Victoria and Krystyna found each other via the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs platform. At the beginning of their collaboration, the business Krystyna wanted to start was based on the idea of a mobile coffee house and educational events that she wanted in order for her customers to unwind and connect. After the exchange, she now needs to write grant applications and coordinate her project in order to achieve more stability during the uncertain times of a global pandemic/crisis.
The ANDA co-working space is different from the company that Krystyna envisages for herself, but it nevertheless turned out to be a great place for Krystyna to develop her ideas, to observe working solutions, and to gain confidence as a young entrepreneur. The project allowed Krystyna to meet Victoria Carreras, an experienced entrepreneur, and to develop a base for further project collaboration with her. The two entrepreneurs communicated both in English and Spanish, allowing them to practice their foreign language skills while ensuring mutual understanding.
During personal meetings between the two entrepreneurs, Victoria dedicated her time to explain different aspects of her work to Krystyna and to share her ideas and thoughts about the workings of ANDA, its history, vision, and business strategy.
During Krystyna’s stay in ANDA, the two entrepreneurs have started the process of ANDA’s event space development: they did research on the local educational, cultural and social offer of Granada and collected the interests of existing communities (in collaboration with her coworkers, Krystyna conducted a questionnaire). Adding to this development process her own ideas, Krystyna prepared a list of possible events in the co-working space (suggesting the invitation of artists and possible yoga teachers, and possibilities of collaboration with Granada’s festivals).
The two entrepreneurs also organized a test event called “CAFE CONNECTION”. ANDA’s Co-working space with its open-minded coworkers turned out to be a great place to test out the organization of workshops on coffee making. Krystyna also proposed 2 more workshops that are going to be facilitated by Victoria during the next few months (one about Sustainable Development and another one about Mega Trends).
However, during the lockdown, Victoria decided to finish their project earlier and Krystyna went back to Poland. The two entrepreneurs have discussed further options for the management of the event space after the project. They have organized a brainstorming session about future possibilities of collaboration and Erasmus+ programs and have recently prepared an application for the Erasmus+ Grant in the adult education sector.
Krystyna is planning on opening her company sooner than she had previously expected. One of the reasons is the fact that she feels ready to enter the business world now after her EYE experience. She feels that sharing her background, perspective, skills, and knowledge was important, but only time will show how much it will influence Victoria’s business. She feels that she could have done more, which is also due to the fact that they had planned to collaborate for a longer period of time (6 months instead of just 2). If they had known that they would only have 2 months for their collaboration, they perhaps would have planned differently. But this pandemic is something no one was expecting. The two entrepreneurs are now in online collaboration, planning the preparation of a project with an international educational offer, which will be developed in cooperation with partners from other countries. It will include online and offline events.
The Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs program was an amazing opportunity for both entrepreneurs. They are very happy that there are projects like this. Krystyna has recommended this program to numerous people. It was an amazing opportunity to create this one-to-one relationship as an equal partnership and both have gained a valuable partnership for their projects.