Introduction

The Guarantee Fund is a financial instrument proposed as a hybrid financial mechanism for the support for Small and Medium Enterprises for productive investments, modernization and introduction of new technologies for restructuring, for the creation of start-ups with
strong social impact in the community, etc.
Priority is given to investments that aim to increase efficiency through restructuring, upgrading and technological transformation of implant and production lines, the use of clean energy sources, encouraging innovation and support to innovative start-ups.
The overall objective of the IDEA project (Investment Development and Empowerment Action) is to “Improve cross border capacity to support entrepreneurship, business survival and competitiveness” through the development of hybrid financial instruments and models of social finance, by improving the capacity of enterprises and social operators.
The IDEA project aims to create an Investment Fund for Social Entrepreneurship and welldefined criteria guides, creating hybrid financial models, funding tools and a strategy for attracting investors, supporting social economy actions, along with all the necessary supporting material that clarifies legal, fiscal, administrative, procedural issues.
Through support to a financial value assigned to each venture will be targeted to increase the access of vulnerable groups to the market, with respective business ideas, which will also be associated with the increase in employment levels of these groups. This solution, according to the attendees, is because, the banking system is often skeptical of social enterprises, which are not beneficiaries of various funds or credit portfolios owned by banks. Consequently, their access to the banks credit system is quite limited. Despite this, the fund in question, creates opportunities to fill this gap.
For this purpose, it will cooperate with public institutions, businesses, universities, located in the territory where the project is implemented, which will be required to build this hybrid financial scheme, which will serve as a portfolio, a guarantee fund , which will provide technical and financial support to social enterprises with business ideas based on several criteria. According to the attendees, priority will be given to those social enterprises that will create innovative, environmentally friendly and socially-oriented businesses. For this, certain parameters or clear indicators will be defined to measure the social impact of the enterprises to be supported.

Through this project, 12 entrepreneurial models will be established in a given time frame, respectively 6 for each Albanian territory and the Greek Cross border area, coupled with the hybrid financial mechanism (according to technical terminology), which may be a guarantee fund or a “Business Angel Network “where business can be included in a certain financial benefit ratio. This also goes in accordance with the social dimension that has introduced the EU for six years, originally created as a mechanism and economic structure