Our motto is: “You may only benefit when the others benefit”. Gaining benefits in expense of others may lead only to short term profit and in long perspective doesn’t pay off. Therefore with our method we not only support individual entrepreneurship, but we encourage also community development in startup context. The project EDUCATION for entrepreneurial INNOVATION is a response to the growing need of supporting young people with fewer opportunities in development of the idea for their own startup initiatives. Project will be realised in partnership with German organisation NaturKultur e.V. that has very rich experience in supporting youth with fewer opportunities and in business coaching and supported by organisations and institutions working with young people in various fields and sectors, also formal education (e.g. University of Zielona Góra , Department of Animation and Adult Education). The study we have conducted in our previous Design Yourself project has proved that once young people have the idea, they are to the large extent able to find the way to put it in practice. Therefore, the real challenge for young people is to believe in their abilities and potential and to make the first steps towards development of the idea for their own initiative. Thus, it is really important to support young people exactly in this initial and personal phase on a startup path. In order to do it, we would like to address people working with these youngsters, who are involved both in formal and non-formal education (i.e. youth workers, youth leaders, EVS mentors, trainers, but also by academic teachers) and provide them with innovative curriculum consisting of two main parts: 1.START it UP - is an innovative set of tools, empowering learners in creativity and supporting their self-awareness as well as taming weaknesses, doubts and fears which accompany them during the first phase of innovative process. All these tools exist in a dialogue mode and are to be used to build supporting community of sharing ideas and empowering their members. Tools we create are based on empower-oriented creativity and lead a learner through different learning paths to the final result, which is the strategic plan for own initiative (combination of online publication in pdf format correlated with website consisting of some e-learning paths and chat). 2. SUSTAIN your START UP - compendium/database of best practices in supporting youth in maintaining their entrepreneurial initiatives. Our method will be ORGANIC, LEARNING IN THE PROCESS, through received feedback as well as through the experience of using it -thus it is “LEARNERS-SOURCED”. Our main quality criteria are: SELF-DIRECTION of the learners at individual level, SELF-ORGANISATION of communities involved and ACCESSIBILITY of the method to all potential beneficiaries. the project results will be disseminated and freely shared with various young people and organisations connected with Erasmus +, non-formal, alternative and formal education, governmental, non-governmental organisations (both in Poland and Germany) through personal contacts as well as social network channels online platforms on local, national and international level.
What motivates young people - especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds - to undertake their own entrepreneurial initiatives? How this motivation may be awaken and supported? How to empower them and help in facing challenges? What do young entrepreneurs experience, what they learn by setting up and maintaining their initiatives? The aim of the SPARKCATCHER - education for entrepreneurial innovation project" was to create educational tools as well as to collect research results that will help- both young people from challenging backgrounds, as well as youth workers and educators - to start and develop their entrepreneurial initiatives, also in the the area of social entrepreneurship. This project was realised by the Arte Ego Foundation from Łódź, Poland in partnership with German organisation NaturKultur e.V. involving eight other organisations from various countries and sectors: University of Zielona Góra (Poland), Słyszę Serce (Poland), MOB (Germany), Westflugel (Germany), Ocean Znanja (Croatia) SOS Detsko Selo (Macedonia) Hellenic Youth Participation (Greece) Kal Youth Center (Luxembourg). In order to reach our aims, we created the innovative curriculum consisting of two main parts: SPARK (start it up)- a set of pedagogical complementary tools and methods empowering young people in starting up their own initiative: http://sparkcatcher.eu/spark/ CATCHER (Sustain your start-up)- compendium of research results, interactive links and empowering entrepreneurial stories supporting youth in maintaining their entrepreneurial initiatives: http://sparkcatcher.eu/catcher/ To create SPARK set of tools, we involved in-depth analysis of experts (youth workers, coaches, academic teachers, art therapists and artists) to design methods stimulating and re-discovering a purpose of life. How to become “unstuck”, starting from the moment in the life of total confusion to the stage of doubts or just lack of motivation: "Awakening through stories” (for those who suffered difficult moments in their lives and needed to „rename” the future); "Awakening through visual process” (for young people who lost motivation, power or feel insecure or not visible enough); "Body|mind|connection" (for everybody whose body is stiff and needs an impulse through movement); "One week journal" which was designed a complementary method for youth workers helping them to maintain their balance in life and thus preventing the burning out process which occurs really often while working with youth. All the methods were were tested by youth workers working with young people from challenging backgrounds (50 participants in total). The results were shared in two forms – using Sparkcatcher on-line platform as well as in the form of PDF publication. For the “CATCHER” part, we conducted international research among young entrepreneurs and youth workers in the area of social inclusion (including NEET group) and social entrepreneurship consisting on survey, in-depth interviews (documented in the form of empowering articles and movies) as well as exploration of interactive resources. We managed to get 79 comprehensively filled in questionnaires and 24 in-depth interviews. The outcomes of the research - separately from the perspective of a youth worker and a youth entrepreneur- were presented at our webpage as well as as PDF publication. The compendium consist of 3 main components: 1. research study report analysing the experience of 34 youth entrepreneurs and 69 youth workers supporting youth in creating and maintaining their start-ups from 12 countries and containing links to interactive resources and institutions supporting youth in their initiatives. 2. Mapping the entrepreneurial path + country study results 3. Empowering stories of youth entrepreneurs in the form of movies and interviews, such as a young mother who co-founded a forest kindergarten or the founders of marketing agency for people with quadriplegia”I stay in bed and I work” and „Greek Geek” . In the frame of the project we organised also one multiplier event which was a webinar targeting youth workers, trainers, academic teachers, etc. We had 172 participants registered for our webinar and 45 actively took part in it. All the people who registered for the webinar were provided with its recording. We have already been invited to use the results in new contexts and in the future projects as both the methods and research are found very innovative and useful by the NGOs and public institutions in Poland and Germany. We have been constantly disseminating the results of our project as we believe that a lot still may be done in the area of inclusion and entrepreneurship, especially social entrepreneurship. We are motivated to make use of our tools and research outcomes and to create new educational partnerships, as our research has demonstrated that this is one of the most needed and effective ways to empower and support young potential entrepreneurs from challenging backgrounds.