Six people at a meeting at a table. — The project partners gathered in Viljandi (Estonia) on September 9-10, 2025.

Young people from the Imatra region and Lake Peipsi in Estonia are focusing on nature-culture-based entrepreneurship

The goal is to improve employment opportunities for young people.

A new international cooperation project, HeritageHunters&Business – Using the Local Nature and Cultural Heritage for Entrepreneurship, co-financed by the Interreg Central Baltic programme, was launched in Imatra in August 2025. The project, which will run until October 2027, will bring together young people from Finland and Estonia, encouraging them to transform the unique natural and cultural values of South Karelia and Lake Peipsi into viable business ideas.

The project aims to encourage young people under the age of 25 to consider nature-based entrepreneurship. The project offers 72 participants, 36 Finns and 36 Estonians, a practical training program. It includes online lectures, workshop work, mentoring and a study trip to Estonia. The Finnish project actors are the City of Imatra and the Finnish Wilderness Museum Foundation. In Estonia, the planning of the training program is coordinated by the Viljandi Academy of Culture of the University of Tartu and the project is led by the Peipus Cooperation Center.

– We want to encourage young people to come up with ideas, give them practical skills and self-confidence to develop business ideas that are based on the natural and cultural heritage of their home region. Young people can implement ideas alone or together or with local residents and communities. The hope is to ignite a spark in the region for the ideation of distinctive and innovative products or services and the development of business activities based on them”, say the representatives of the project’s Finnish partners Tytti Lankinen ja Tea Laitimo.

The project kick-off meeting was held on 8–9.9 September 2025 in Viljandi, Estonia, where the project partners agreed on the first steps and started preparing the training programme. The first of three training periods is planned to start in early winter 2026, and students will be recruited in the near future.

The total budget of the project is 637.692 euros, of which 80% (510.153 euros) is financed from the Interreg Central Baltic 2021–2027 program.