Today’s school is trying to become a modern institution equipped with new technologies, still making more and more attractive educational offers to be appealing on the educational market. Partners taking part in the project “On the road to entrepreneurship” realise the fact that the school priority should definitely be developing students’ key competence. It is extremely important to mention that despite the fact they study certain profession, they still do not know what they will do after graduation. Following our graduates’ careers we find out that they usually start the job which is not correlated with their education. Besides, living in the society where the rules of market economy apply makes young people be creative, flexible and open to new and brave ways of thinking.Therefore the aim of the project is to develop their key and entrepreneurial competences and prepare students to create their own career path.The task is particularly important because as the results of market research reveal nowadays young men will be forced to change their profession even a few times in their life time. An enterprising man is creative, curious about the world, able to set goals, make decisions, solve problems and manage own time. In order to awaken all of these traits and abilities, there will be established a school enterprise, in each of the schools, run by the students. Running school company will enable the students to gain competences in selling goods and services, managing own enterprise and creating a business and production plan. Apart from the knowledge teachers will give them some advice, guidance and the courage to take challenges, make their business dreams come true, and they will help them become creative and committed as well as they will make them eager to take risk. The project is supposed to give them some practical ‘at start’ tips to make their independent beginnings easier. All the project activities are essential to encourage students to build and develop their personal competence necessary for both personal and professional development. We realize that students need the contact with real businessmen during their education. It is important to acquire the knowledge and gain some experience. So we planned Job experience for students which will take place during the international meetings. Not only will they enable the students to see different jobs and their character but also discover their own skills and qualifications which will be essential when starting their first job in the future. The people from business world will become mentors for students who will inspire them to conscious education during their career path. Whey will be experts in the given field giving young people valuable advice and sharing their knowledge and experience.They will tell them how realise their ambitions and become a professionally fulfilled man. We would like the mentoring to be a long-term process and to be continued after finishing the project. We wish to start a long lasting cooperation between school and local companies to support the students. Implementing such activities requires developing necessary and innovative tools, which will help the teachers support the students’ work. During the international project meetings teachers will have a chance to compare different curricula, develop lesson plans for lessons of entrepreneurship which will be devoloped in English. The team from Belgium will take care of the e-version of these lesson plans. Next, the lessons will be led and tested during the international meetings with the students.The outcomes of this will enrich the school curricula and introduce bilingual education. This way teachers’ motivation will increase. One of the main tasks for teachers will be to spread the results of the project around and send them to other schools and institutions. The activities will also promote the school and European programs in the local surroundings. Because the topic of the projects implies developing the competences within the broad field of entrepreneurship, a blog “Entrepreneurial Europe” will be run by all of the students of partner schools. Youth will inform their peers about current affairs in the field of entrepreneurship.The blog will be run in English and systematically updated. The common international work will develop the language skills but also reading comprehension, and the ability to use and process texts. What is more, students will learn to select information. Students will be assisted by teachers who will work with the students using diversified methods of finding information, e.g. Webquest. There will be six European schools involved in the project from: Poland, Belgium, Italy, Cyprus, Hungary and Portugal. The results will be also getting to know European cultures and promotion of other regions which will be visited. Due to such activities we have an opportunity to educate self-confident, open and communicative citizens who will respect one another.
Today’s market needs to be constantly adjusted to changeable free market reality, forcing workers to retrain and requalify. In this situation proper education in the field of entrepreneurship, developing core competencies became the priorities of the project ‘On the Road to Entrepreneurship’, which was run by schools from 6 European countries: Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Portugal.The schools taking part in the project very often had to face the problem of proper motivation among students, who had not shown any enthusiasm for brightening school life and who had lacked enough motivation to learn foreign languages as well as vocational subjects.To develop entrepreneurial attitudes among students in a new and interesting way, teachers suggested a game – School company. They did their best to encourage students not only to take particular steps connected with running school companies but also to take risks and challenges. All the support helped bring the students’ ideas into effect. It also triggered them to become creative, committed risk –takers. As a result of the creativity they established 6 school companies which offer different products and services like aromatised salt from Sicily produced by KI SIAURU, stress relief colouring books and pictures on various objects by Game of Tones – a company from Hungary, advertising gadgets by schEpp.be from Belgium, SOIZ Time Travel Agency in Poland, TED TIME event company in Portugal or the LittleTastes Restaurant in Cyprus. Each of the company ran their own businesses in the school entrepreneurship centers. They also created and updated their own Facebook profiles. The mission of the project ‘On the road to entrepreneurship’ was to develop entrepreneurial attitudes among students, prepare them to enter both domestic and European job markets. It also gave them some practical ‘how to get started well’ guidelines. Thanks to its realization students had the opportunity to take first steps in business. The international exchange turned to be a chance for young people to look closer at school companies in different European countries to see how they work. The participants looked for way how to create international cooperation between school companies. They organized a sport event ‘On the road to EntreSPORTship’ for school and local communities in Portugal. While realizing the project the youth had the opportunity to exhibit their products and services on stalls during International School Companies Fair in Italy, Belgium and Hungary. Thanks to that students could develop European way of thinking, they inspired and motivated one another for further work. While realizing the project over 130 students took part in mini job experiences in 30 different companies and institutions. Due to the fact that it happened abroad they found out how companies function in Europe, what the tasks are to do there on different positions. They also learnt what the indispensable qualities are to do particular jobs. This way schools started cooperation with local employers, which was one of the main aims of the project. Each foreign participant received Europass Certificates and some additional certificates for attending workshops organized during project meetings and within local activities. Additionally, to make students develop reading comprehension and to teach them how to use the Internet properly as a reliable source of information an international blog called ‘Our Local Entrepreneurship’ was set up. It was written in English by students. This way young people learnt by themselves to verify, develop and critically assess the Internet resources. The project ‘On the Road to Entrepreneurship’ means also teachers’ intensive and hard work. During 3 working meetings in Poland, Portugal and Italy they participated in special workshops enabling them to develop their methods of working with students. One of the main aims of the project was to create, test and evaluate 18 lesson plans, which are to support vocational subject and foreign language teachers’ job. They were divided into three categories: marketing, communication and management. To make them more useful and practical they were prepared in English both in electronic and printed versions. We strongly hope that they will be the onset of introducing a bilingual teaching in schools. By running the project and realizing its aim, the teachers improved their own methodology of working with students using IT and other activating methods. They learnt new techniques which are motivating in other countries as well as new organizational and technical solutions. They also learnt how to cooperate in an international team, they broadened their minds. After two years of realizing the project we observed a development of personal and core competence: an increase of motivation to study harder, a development of organizational skills, becoming open to other cultures, ability to cooperate in international groups and developing tolerance.