The ESSE project is a mixed partnership of seven organisations from five European countries who aim to encourage employment and job creation through education and training. They have come together to create a strategic partnership, with aims and outputs that will ultimately encourage and support VET learners to build their employability and entrepreneurship skills and gain worthwhile employment after their training. It will achieve this by: • Creating an environment to foster a ‘spirit’ of enterprise and entrepreneurship in VET practitioners, teachers, trainers and from them, flowing to their learners. • Producing professional development tools to give VET practitioners the experience and confidence to embed entrepreneurship in their teaching and encourage enterprising behaviours in their learners: - A two day accredited training course for VET professionals: Training the Trainers – Embedding Social Entrepreneurship in VET - Training resources to support delivery of this course, in all the languages of the partnership, available online and as a workbook - A Portfolio of Case Studies of Social Entrepreneurship activities and models for VET environments, giving practical information and inspiration to VET professionals to innovate in their own work - A peer-to-peer mentoring and coaching system to encourage the transversal sharing of experiences, knowledge and practical advice - Establishing social enterprise experiences in VET environments to give VET learners practical work experience • Building a transversal community of knowledge and good practice around social enterprise to encourage entrepreneurial behaviours in VET providers, their partners, stakeholders and learners The project will target: • VET teachers, trainers and practitioners • Professional development managers in education: schools, VET and HEI • Enterprise and entrepreneurship professionals • Local Authority Enterprise Officers, Education Administrators & Policy Makers • VET learners It will strengthen the competences and transversal skills of VET practitioners, in particular initiative and entrepreneurship: encouraging and enabling staff at vocational training and non-profit organisations to think and act in an entrepreneurial way. In the short and longer term, it will impact on vocational learners and the vocational training environment by providing real social enterprise experiences that enhance their employability skills. ESSE will impact on the VET sector by providing an innovative training and support methodology that improves the quality of its provision. It will also impact on local economies, in particular the Social Economy, by encouraging the creation and expansion of social entrepreneurship to meet employment and society's needs.
The ‘Increasing Students’ Employability Skills and Economic Growth through Social Enterprise’ project, known as ‘ESSE’ began in January 2015 and officially ended in August 2017, although our partnership continues. Our project brought together expertise from seven transnational partners from the VET, HE, public and third sectors: City College Plymouth (CCP; the Lead), Plymouth Social Enterprise Network (PSEN); University of Plymouth; Materahub in Italy; Urkraft in Sweden; Gemeente 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands; and Zukunftsbau gGmbH in Germany. The project was built to realise synergies between different sectors of VET, HE and school environments across the transnational partnership, developing active citizenship through social responsibility, sharing best practice through the development of training and learning resources with multiple applications. The project aimed to harness and share best practices of social entrepreneurship taking place at organisational, sector, city and regional level throughout the partnership. From its first management meeting in February 2015, considerable activity has taken place and a strong, collaborative partnership has been established. The ESSE partnership developed three Intellectual Outputs: O1 Train the Trainer (TtT) – Embedding Social Entrepreneurship in VET – Joint transnational development of an innovative training course in social enterprise, enabling staff and practitioners to confidently embed social entrepreneurship within their vocational training and maximise benefits to learners; O2 Social Business Models for Transnational VET environments – exploration of the process of developing social business models in each transnational partner’s country resulted in the creation of a portfolio of case studies that multiplies the impact of the project and provides additional training and support resources for the Train the Trainer course; and O3 Peer-to-Peer Mentoring and Coaching – Establishment of an online peer-to-peer learning and coaching network across VET organisations from the transnational partnership, supporting sharing of knowledge, best practice and providing useful resources and benefits. These outputs were developed and enhanced through two Training Seminars, 5-day training courses held in Plymouth and Berlin - bringing together practitioners and experts for an active learning programme, showcasing exemplars and sharing best practices; and were promoted and shared through multiplier events held by each partner, also growing their social enterprise networks and sharing good practices, locally, regionally and transnationally. ESSE partners and participants of the Train the Trainer course perceived the course to have had an influential effect; strengthening participants’ entrepreneurial skills, increasing their knowledge about social enterprise, and improving their confidence and awareness of EU frameworks. Both partners and participants also felt the course had the potential to provide the students of the trainers who took part in the course with alternative career options. Indeed, participants believed the course would subsequently impact on their students’ knowledge and awareness of the employability skills they required, as well as increasing their initiative and skills for new business creation, and broadening their options in terms of practical work experiences. More widely, project partners felt that their own knowledge of social enterprise has been enriched by this process, and that their understanding about broader topics such as government and education systems has developed considerably since starting the project. Most notably, however, is how original expectations of the project have been exceeded; ESSE has achieved much more than originally envisaged, expanding the project’s impact from higher and vocational education to cities, councils, and cultures. This has been facilitated through effective collaboration, bringing together a variety of skills and perspectives to not only create a suite of creative outputs, but develop partnerships, both internally and externally, which will extend beyond the project’s legacy.