Building on the notion that cultural tourism with maritime dimension is an up-and-coming blue growth generator, the project CulTourE4Youth – Supporting youth entrepreneurship in cultural tourism for coastal communities aimed to provide background information and analysis on how youth entrepreneurship is promoted by existing policies and initiatives, and how it can be better supported to address local and regional challenges, such as youth unemployment and brain drain.

The CulTourE4Youth project aimed to develop a regional paradigm as capacity building initiator in order to:

• – Increase the knowledge and entrepreneurial culture of young people, to be able to meet market demands and identify business opportunities;
• – Promote sustainable coastal tourism practices to develop new products, services and processes for sustainable cultural tourism;
• – Motivate employers, educational institutions, policy makers and civil society, and facilitate synergies among them, to support youth entrepreneurship with concrete actions.

Although the thematic priorities targeted the wider Black Sea region, emphasis was placed on five Black Sea countries, i.e. Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Republic of Türkiye and Ukraine.

The project built on the potential of the Black Sea countries as attractive tourist destinations that creates job opportunities and necessity for skilled human capital in the sector, and assessed the level of support to the latter by national policies and regional cooperation frameworks.

The present paper constitutes the final report of the project and includes the key results and recommendations for future actions. It is addressed mainly to policy stakeholders, funding agencies, the business community and the academia, as the primary actors of policy-making and policy-delivery.

Moreover, you can find the other activities and deliverables of the project through this link: https://icbss.org/cultoure4youth-project/

The CulTourE4Youth Project ran under the coordination of the International Centre for Black Sea Studies (ICBSS) in cooperation with the Balkans and Black Sea Commission of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe (CPMR) and the METU Institute of Marine Sciences / ODTÜ Deniz Bilimleri Enstitüsü (METU-IMS / ODTÜ-DBE). It is co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Contract ENI/2020/421-957, coordinated by the BSEC PERMIS.

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