Entrepreneurship is recognized as a powerful driver of economic growth and job creation: it creates new companies and jobs, opens up new markets, and nurtures new skills and capabilities. Entrepreneurship makes economies more competitive and innovative and is crucial in achieving the objectives of several European sectorial policies. For this reason, one of the main recommendations (Action Pillars) by the EU Commission Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan (2012) is to promote entrepreneurial education and training. However, in the EU the uptake and the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in European vocational schools are still far from being fully satisfactory. This is mainly due to lack of suitable materials and lack of skills in trainers. The 2006 European Key Competences Framework defines sense of initiative and entrepreneurship as an individual's ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. The benefits of entrepreneurship education are not limited to boosting start-ups, innovative ventures and new jobs. Entrepreneurship is a competence for everyone, helping people to be more creative and self-confident in whatever they undertake. Storytelling it is the normal way of human thinking. Through micro-narrative humans give meaning to life events and share values with others. Storytelling is very effective because it brings together the rational and the emotional, and elicits identification and emulation in the listener. The growth and ubiquitous diffusion of the web make now possible the digital storytelling enlarging further its diffusion and impact, also in the training and educational field. This project is addressed to aspirant entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and VET trainers and will develop a methodology and a set of tools for developing entrepreneurship through storytelling. The project will produce a number of videos in different formats featuring 60 young entrepreneurs belonging to innovative sectors and sectors with good market opportunities (the entrepreneurs will tell about their business: how it started, what are the main current challenges, what skills are needed, etc.). a Study on main themes emerged by the interviews, a Guide on use of storytelling in VET, a face to face and a E-training course on developing entrepreneurship, a E-course addressed to trainers. The project is submitted by a consortium of 6 organizations interested at different levels at developing entrepreneurship: Employers’ associations (P5 IT, P3 RO), research organizations (P2 PL, P6 IT), VET organizations (P1 IT, P4 ES). Thanks to the project, over 70.000 members of target groups will be informed about the project, and over 1.5000 ‘learners’ and 180 trainers will be involved on it at different levels.
The main contexts in which DIST project evolved, are the increase of the Sense of Initiative and Entrepreneurship (SIE) and the Digital Storytelling. In Europe, a serious attention to the development of entrepreneurial skills, in educational and in vocational training areas, is required. This lack can be attributed to many reasons: a learning culture that, only in the last few years has re-discovered the transversal feature of entrepreneurial competence; the shortage of methods and appropriate instruments to promote education towards entrepreneurship; the shortage of competence of teachers, educators, trainers. Today “entrepreneurship is a competence for everyone”: people need it in changing working environments, where they need to equip themselves more and more independently, need to be able to distinguish and select (possibilities, information, opportunities), need to be creative, need to have self-confidence and self-efficacy perception. The other project scope is Digital Storytelling. Storytelling can't just be defined “the need of sharing stories”, it is a real multi-disciplinary field of study, work and action, it is a method for influencing the target public, to learn and to enrich knowledge and skills, it is a tool that allows to effectively share experiences and methods of work, a pathway through which it is possible to define personal and organizational identities, a way of managing the consensus and the power, a way to formulate, check and reformulate political, economic and marketing decisions. Digital Storytelling is the natural progression from oral storytelling to the using of computer based tools to tell stories. The DIST project purpose was to merge SIE and Digital Storytelling with the aim to create innovative educational tools and methods that teaches trainers to enhance the SIE of their students and that trains aspirant entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to enhance their SIE, to overcome the inadequacy of resources and the insufficiency of trained teachers in the field of entrepreneurship education in Europe. The project have been carried out by 6 organizations, belonging to 4 countries (Italy, Poland, Spanish and Romania), interested, at different levels, in developing entrepreneurship: an organization that promotes innovative means for modernizing the human resources and the development of the professional training. An association of managers providing them services, carrying out studies on entrepreneurship themes, organizing conferences, seminars, workshops. An Entrepreneur's association from several economic sectors whose role is to represent the member guilds and associations interests and extend its influence to the public sector and social institutions.One Faculty of Management researching on: labor market trends, skill needs analysis methodologies, entrepreneurship and development of SME sector, restructuring of industry, innovation , technical, technological and organizational progress. A non-profit Association of social promotion dealing with: educational and vocational guidance, drop out, training of career counsellors, citizenship rights and self-empowerment in professional. A leader in the field of the methodology of Narrative career guidance, based on storytelling, applied also in vocational training . A VET Agency providing VET courses and e-courses for many different target-groups. The DIST main activities can be summarized as follows: in-depth analysis of the target group, collection of information and organisation of first mobility; drafting of version 1 of the project outputs; pilot of the versions 1 of the outputs and organisation of the second mobility; revision of versions 1 of the outputs on the basis of the feedback collected during the pilot; publication of all the version 2 of the project outputs; organisation of the final events. Transversely, have been carried out management and valorisation activities, with the purpose to allow a smooth progress of the project and a proper dissemination of its achievements. Those activities have lead to the creation of: • a Guide about Storytelling for training, • 15 Enhanced full Video representing the story and the point of view of young and successfully entrepreneurs, • 15 Thematic VET videos on the main entrepreneurship issues, • 1 E-course addressed to trainers, • 1 E-course addressed to aspirant entrepreneurs, • 1 E-course addressed to entrepreneurs. The impact on the target group: 60 young managers interviewed; 653 people involved in the pilot; 9 newsletters sent to around 10.000 addresses, 1.000 leaflet distributed; 500 students enrolled in the DIST platform; 400 attendees of the Final Conferences; 1.600 visitors of the DIST website; 150 followers to the DIST Facebook; around 3.000 views of the DIST you tube channel plus articles about the project on journals, DIST products downloadable by 3 EOR repositories, intellectual output freely downloaded by the DIST project’s website www.diistproject.eu.