SERVICE LEARNING AS A LEVER FOR RURAL SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN CROATIA

The recent post-crisis years have brought significant problems onto the surface, where Croatian people, particularly young, do not see the perspective in their homeland. This is especially obvious in the rural communities where the emigration took on the form of the total exodus. The aim of this paper is to explore the possibilities of the young people engagement in the service learning to support social entrepreneurship venture initiatives, particularly in rural areas. At the beginning we shall set out the framework by defining the main concepts that lie behind the idea - the social entrepreneurship and the service learning. Then we shall present several initiatives based on the qualitative approach - analysis of such cases from the literature. Furthermore, this will be supplemented by more thorough analysis of the two case studies from the Croatian practice to promote the idea of a rural life sustainable potential. The data were acquired through in-depth semi-structured interviews which were conducted with Croatian social entrepreneurs from rural areas by using the method of phenomenological interviewing.