Creating a partnership culture and developing common local products to increase the export capacity of small businesses in frontline and borderland rural areas

The project is based on the results of two previous projects, which proved that the focus should be directed from tourism to the additional development of small businesses. The hackathons organized in six oblasts showed that the biggest problem in the development of rural entrepreneurship and the realization of export potential is the difference in values and perceptions, resulting from a lack of partnership culture. Since the situation is very similar to Estonia in the 1990s, it is important to include experts who worked in Estonia in the corresponding period. At the beginning of the project, regional B2B (business to business) study tours in Ukraine and sectoral trainings will be conducted. In the second phase, online courses will be developed together with regional universities. In the third stage, entrepreneurs will undergo online training in six frontline and border regions (Zaporiizia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Kyiv, Zhitomir). The important goal of the trainings is to strengthen the communication and partnership culture between entrepreneurs, local governments and the state, and to increase the export capacity of companies