New Entrepreneur (NE):
Name & surname: Zoran Mitrović
Country: Serbia
Age: 33
Sector of activity: Ecology
Did you already start your business? No
Name of business/website: “Moje Zeleno – My Green”, www.mojezeleno.com
What is your future business? Services of “Moje Zeleno” are Support to private and public companies and individuals (people who can’t take care of their green spaces, roofs, gardens, walls, etc. cause of different reasons). There are four pillars of service: building green or “living walls”, green roofs, taking care of gardens, parks, (private or public), also dealing/caring about the plants and services of landscape architecture.
Host Entrepreneur (HE):
Name & surname: Elena Gl Arroyo
Country: Spain
Sector of activity: NGO
Experience in running a business (in years): 12
Name of business/website: Asociacion Mojo de Caña, www.mojodecana.org
What is your business? Mojo de Caña is a socio-cultural association involved in social education, cultural productions and international projects within the Erasmus+ framework and the European Solidarity Corps. We are a non-profit organization, which promotes employment, entrepreneurship, equality, human rights, education in values and provides services in the areas of youth, culture, leisure and free time and social services to help improve the quality of life of people in general.
Period of exchange: 18/01/2021 – 16/07/2021
Duration of exchange: 6 months
Which important financial lessons did Zoran learn during his stay with Elena?
Elena and I were very active in the process of showing/learning everything about dealing with the business which was not so familiar to me. Dealing with finances took the most of the time, not that much how to find the resources (as I was doing similar things in an NGO where I volunteer in Serbia) but more how to organise them, how to prepare financial reports, planning and having sustainable budgets for longer periods of time etc. Two of us and some other colleagues sometimes stayed much longer in the office after work to work on these topics which was interesting to me. Also, next to planned activities, there was more: working on developing new project ideas, applying for funds, and working with youth and kids on small local projects in Las Palmas.
Some of the things that we all benefit from is creating new projects and preparing them from scratch until they are ready to be sent to donors, together with a financial plan for several years. I can say that 80% of that was my work. The second benefit is connecting Mojo de Cana with the NGO “Eko fun kamp” from Serbia, making two KA2 projects. Personally, this is very big and important to me.
Zoran Mitrović (NE): “Having this project for 6 months in the time of COVID in such a beautiful place, surrounded by very kind colleagues willing to support me in every possible way, was the best decision in the last 3 years of my life.”
Elena Gl Arroyo (HE): “More hardworking young people with vision than Zoran are rare in these hard times for all. The ”Eco spirit”, which was missing in Moho de Cana, is now here – Zoran will stay in our hearts and probably longer than he planned on the island.”