The Community of Entrepreneurs Action Learning Program (CoEALP) project is building an action learning practice to create a learning space in communities for educational institutions and their students to build community entreprises in collaboration with disadvantaged communities and their youth. These Local Project teams run a pilot in 5 countries, exchanging learnings, adding existing experiences and tools, to collectively build an innovative and strong curriculum to be available and spread in current and new countries. With the Community of Entrepreneurs Action Learning Program (CoEALP) we aim to build a network, a 'good practice' and a tool, based on a succesfull Brazilian methodology (The oasis game), to have young learners, learning institutes and communities build an entrepreneurial learning space together. For young learners as well as underprivileged youth finding entrepreneurial and collective answers to economic and social challenges is a key-skill and learning-experiences for a more secure and sustainable future. We see that Community entrepreneurship is a powerful solution and experience for that. The CoEALP Project brings together a diverse range of organisations from Holland, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Brazil and the UK. We have created a balanced portfolio of experience, application and methods, including a business school (edventure Froome), specialist in working in disadvantaged communities and education for community mobilization (Elos Nederland, Kiribil Sarrea), specialists in social enterprising and environmental education (Ideenhoch3, altekio) as well as working with students of higher education (act4Change). With the CoEALP project the partners deepen our collective experiences and effort in five countries and bridge this best practice to formal learning structures and organization. During and after the program these institutes can use the CoEALP pedagogy and curriculum to offer students and challenged youth the opportunity for holistic and action based learning experiences. The curriculum, toolkit and the learnings of the pilot will be available and downloadable from the projectwebsite and in the divulgation phase we aim to have at minimum two new countries and institutions adopt the model. Program summary In the preparation phase participants + the 2 local stakeholders come together at training of trainers for an oasis communidade emprendedores program, an exchange of methods, training in monitoring and evaluation and collectively develop a clear project implementation path in local context. During the follow up period the partners start building the online learning space and partners apply the current knowledge in the five different countries where the kick-off of a local CoEALP-inspired program will take place simultaneously. A 2nd training at Edventure Frome will focus on the transfer of pedagogy for longer term training programs in community context, focussed on students with the will to build social entreprises, followed by mid-term meeting with all partners, with online participation of Brazilian partner to check progress, harvest mid-term learnings, build first proto-type framework for future CoEALP program. After a 3rd training module for building of cooperations as a legal framework for collective community entreprises, during the third transnational meeting, all partners and invited stakeholders have an immerssion taking the most important lessons from the program so far to finalize the pedagogical basis for the CoELP-program and design the first parts of the intellectual output. Partners collectively organize a workshop program as part of the yearly organized European Oasis Gathering check (www.impulsingchange.org) for more information of this years program. This will be the main spreading and releasing moment for the CoEALP program where we invite professionals and potential replicators from other countries. After that all partners host a Local dissemination event to find new partners for application and to launch their own next module.
The CEAL network has developed since 2014, with support of Erasmusplus, a process for Community-based Entrepreneurship Action Learning programs. The main objective of the strategic partnership was to build a new way of non-formal education for young social and community entrepreneurs. The CEAL network and process-model has been developed, based on the premise that in the current context of challenges we face in Europe, in a context of unemployment and precariousness, new attitudes, new education and experiences are necessary. We see that in current socio-economic contexts across Europe there's a strong need from and for the youth to take the future they desire into their own hands. To answer to this need the partnerships’ objectives within the building a new form of non-formal education were organizing multi-stakeholder pilots locally, building up capacity of trainers/facilitators through executed projects that lead to sustainable impact in the communities and adoption of the program by universities. Additional objectives were strengthening the network and through the shared experiences build a toolbox, curriculum and learning platform. During the two years the CEAL-network partners of Madrid, Bilbao (Spain), Berlin (Germany), Utrecht (Holland), Frome (UK) and Gent (Belgium) assembled a team of local partners, consisting of an educational partner and a community partner. The profile of the organizations involved include universities, non-formal educational institutions, a school of community entrepreneurship, community-organizations, NGO’s, neighbourhood associations, social welfare institutions and cooperatives that work on the edge of community mobilization, social entrepreneurship and education. These local partnerships visited over the period of the partnership the various international trainings, while locally setting up programs in different communities, joining a group of community members, local youth and students. Trainings included: - a 6 day gathering with the main purpose of getting fully acquainted with the Elos Philosophy and Oasis Game, the framework and inspiration that thrives this project. - A 5 day gathering in Frome (UK) with the main purpose of getting fully acquainted with the Edventure model and to further deepen our practice of designing programs using their experience with pedagogical frameworks of the community entreprise school they run. - a 5 day gathering in Utrecht with the main purpose of diving deeper into community entrepreneurship, how to sustain it and how to integrate the experience in personal- and community-setting. From late August 2015 till June 2016 in the 6 partner cities, 2 to 3 months local multi-stakeholder pilot programs were executed in local communities. 63 students, 40 local youth, 60 community members and other stakeholders got involved to work in 6 communities, sparking the realization of 20 projects of which most are sustained in local context or have been turned into community projects with a value exchange and therewith socio-economic impact. Projects included revitalization of community spaces, setting up of a community food sharing fridge, community-talent-festivals to village tourism project. Most of all CEAL pilots brought students and youth in communities together to learn to create entrepreneurial social projects and learn skills and attitudes through doing it. The experience of taking students out of the classroom and community-members out of their houses, offered many lessons of new ways of collaboration and the creation of value propositions on a community-level. Programs took place in urban and rural communities, challenging participants to bridge differences in backgrounds while realizing concrete results together. The CEAL-program is inspired by a Brazilian methodology, the Elos philosophy and its’ Oasis Game, that focusses on local talents and common dreams, which has been applied worldwide for over 15 years worldwide. Based on the underlying Elos philosophy and experience with community-entrepreneurship during the pilotprograms the foundation was laid for the CEAL-processmodel released in September 2016. Based on the systemization of the experiences the CEAL-network has created a toolbox and process design package, which contains a processmap, activity cards, supporting toolcards and a guide. These tools are supported by a learning platform which consists of stories, cases, blogs on ceal.eu in connection to the wikispace where we offer materials and dialogue giving the future user all the input to create a CEAL-curriculum. Nowadays the CEALnetwork consists of organizations from various European countries who work in the field of education, community development and process facilitation. A large part of the projects initiated during the pilots are sustainably continuing on their path of development.