The project 'Creative Entrepreneurship in the Field of Leisure Activities in a European Context' (Ceflaec) is a three-year project of vocationally-oriented schools in Spain, Slovakia and Germany intended to lead students to develop creative business ideas in the area of leisure activities in a Europe-wide context.The context of the project is the participation of three vocationally-oriented schools with a focus on business administration: La Guineueta in Barcelona/Spain, Obchodná akadémia in Bratislava/Slovakia and Berufskolleg Bottrop in the German Ruhr area decided to start a project to motivate students in the participating countries to engage in creative entrepreneurship, especially as our schools are located in regions with a high (youth) unemployment where students' chances on the labour market have to be improved. The students directly involved in the project will be about 90 students from the departments of business administration, information technology and social sciences and about 25 teachers in the participating countries. However, by means of spreading the project work to further classes and whole departments, the project will reach a total number of about 900 students in the three partner schools altogether.In order to reach the aims of the project, we want to lead our students to create innovative business concepts, to research and develop equally innovative ideas for the promotion of a business by using social media and other methods and finally, by comparing the concepts in each country, to get an insight into the international differences regarding leisure-activities (the focus of the new businesses) and business administration in general. In the first project year the students will start by researching an existing creative business in the field of leisure activities in their city or region (via the internet, visits to the company, interviews conducted at the company etc.) in order to find out about the innovative entrepreneurship of that business. Within the course of the project year they will develop, based on that research of an existing company in their own country, their own ideas for further development of this creative entreprise. The project result of the first year will be a business plan developed by the students at the first project meeting in internationally mixed groups using their innovative entrepreneurial ideas for further development of the companies in the three partner countries.In the second project year the focus for the further development of the innovative companies will be the use of social media within creative entrepreneurship: On the basis of research conducted in their cities the students will create ideas for the use of social media as a marketing tool to promote their own, newly developed businesses. At the second student meeting they will thus create a concrete example for the promotion of their companies using social media, e.g. a facebook page, a youtube video etc. The result of the second project year will consist of these three social media products of the companies.In the third project year the focus will be on the evaluation of the business plans of year one and the social media product of year two: By creating and carrying out an online-based questionnaire the students at the schools in each country will evaluate the business concepts taking into consideration the typical free-time activities and habits of people in their own country. At the third student conference the student groups will compare the results of the questionnaires in each country and in this way find possible cultural differences concerning free-time activites due to climate, habits and national preferences. In mixed, international groups the students will then elaborate a marketing product for their company (a poster, flyer or mailshot) in order to market their business tailored to the needs and preferences of the target group in each country.The results of the project work will be made available and used in further classwork at our schools in the years to come as European Learning Situations in the departments of business administration, information technology and social care. Also, we expect this measure to have an impact on the students' vocational qualifications on the labour market and in a European context (future jobs abroad or in companies with an international orientation), their motivation to participate in internships and vocationally oriented student exchanges to prepare for a job on the Euorpean labour market, all in all their improved chances for a vocationally succesfull future: Through their participation in the project and the certificates the students will receive as proof of taking part in the project, they will improve their chances on the labour market considerably, especially those who otherwise do not have the chance to work in international groups or travel abroad and make the experiences necessary in today's international economy.
The three-year project of three vocational schools in Spain, Germany and Slovakia aimed at developing creative business ideas in the field of leisure activities in a Europe-wide context. Participating schools were La Guineueta in Barcelona / Spain, Obchodná académia in Bratislava / Slovakia and Berufskolleg Bottrop in the Ruhr area. In the first year of the project, students developed various creative business ideas in areas where they saw a potential for a successful business. First of all they prepared presentations in which they presented their business ideas to the students of the other partner schools. The basis for this was research on the leisure behavior of the population including visits to leisure companies in the region such as the Alpincenter Bottrop (a former coal heap converted to a ski hall with a connected Sky-Diving wind tunnel) or the Scary Maze, "Grusellabrinth", in Bottrop. In numerous additional classroom sessions the students developed their own creative ideas for starting a business. During the project meeting with the participating students and teachers in Barcelona, the diverse proposals for creative start-ups were not only presented to the students of the partner schools. In international groups of 6 students (2 per country) several ideas were combined and then further elaborated. The idea of a recreational labyrinth of a group of students from Berufskolleg Bottrop, in which various tasks and "challenges" must be solved, obviously found great approval because the idea of "the maze" is found in several of the five newly founded companies, e.g. also in the "Invima - the invisible maze", a maze in which also disabled or blind people can experience and solve exciting tasks virtually. In the Fairytale World, a kind of fantasy land of three cultures, Spanish, Slovak and German legends and cultures can be experienced. Using various business tools like the Model Canvas or Empathy Map, which focuses on a company's customers these ideas were developed and then presented to other groups of students and teachers. In addition to working together on the project, the students also had enough opportunities to get to know the partner school in Barcelona and, above all, each other while exploring the city together in a tour of the Paseo de Gracia and the old town of Barcelona, where many different tasks had to be solved. Not only did they get to know their classmates but they also learned a lot about the city of Barcelona. In the second year of the project, the business plans and target groups of the five newly founded companies were further developed and, above all, a marketing concept was developed. Students developed a logo and slogan for their newly founded company in international groups as well as a marketing concept specifically for the dissemination via social media. The concrete development of such companies as "Fairytale World", "Mosaic Maze", "Momo's Up", "Invima" and "Brave Maze" was supported during the student meeting in Bratislava by an IBM workshop, from which the students could get to know communication tools. The improvement of the English language was also in the foreground. In addition to the project work, the 30 pupils in general got to know the Slovak school life, typical Slovak dishes and dances, and Bratislava itself during a city tour in the snow. The highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the advertising strategies for the newly-founded companies to a larger audience in English. Finally, the third year was about deciding on an opening location and planning an opening event. The preliminary work was done in numerous sessions in addition to the lessons. In their international teams, the participants carried out and then compared the results of a self-conducted survey in order to decide in which country or location the company would have the greatest chance of success. Then they had the task of creating merchandising giveaways and presenting them at the last student meeting in Bottrop as well as planning an opening event for their company. At the Bottroper Kulturwerkstatt they also used green-screen technology to create a short advertising clip to advertise the opening of their company and finally planned an opening event for their company in internationally mixed groups and presented it to all the fellow-students and teachers, which also marked the completion of the 3-year project work.