Context In most European countries, specialist support for social enterprises is largely absent and, where it exists, it is limited or fragmented. There is lack of mentoring and training schemes as well as investment readiness support corresponding to the specific features of social enterprises. Target group Therefore, BASET addresses the learning needs of educators for their continuing professional development in social entrepreneurship. The educators include professional teachers, coaches, consultants, mentors, lecturers, SME experts, investors, professionals providing services to entrepreneurs and companies, and staff in business support organizations, training organizations and financial institutions. They will be upskilled on how to train and inspire social entrepreneurs to innovate, use curriculum templates, access business networks and will be acquainted with good practices and know-how on how to carry out mentoring across the innovation life cycle, how to use new teaching methods based on gamification and visualization. Objectives The main objective of the project is to foster social entrepreneurship in Europe through elaborating, testing and providing a set of learning & training instruments to educators. All instruments will be tested whereas a group of educators will be trained to offer a set of resources such as training in entrepreneurial skills, mentoring focused on designing business models and business plans, networking within the broader social entrepreneurship ecosystem and access to grants or seed capital. Partner organizations The partnership includes five participants from four countries: KISMC - not for profit in Bulgaria focusing on developing competences for adults in innovation management, creativity and entrepreneurship; CEED – an experienced business support organization in the entrepreneurship development in Bulgaria; IDEC - a consultancy with an accredited lifelong learning centre in Greece organizing in-service training courses for teachers and trainers, informal learning and vocational training; Caban Capital - a fund manager in the UK providing opportunities for investors to invest in entrepreneurs through services each business requires to be successful; and Creative District - a Brussels-based organization supporting initiatives in the creative and cultural industries for societal impact through providing innovation spaces for guidance and support of entrepreneurs. Activities The following activities are planned: management plan and preparatory work; project execution; monitoring and reporting; evaluation of the results and quality assurance; executing and monitoring the dissemination activities. Methodology The methodology concentrates on a collaborative cooperation based on the commonly accepted rules, preliminary defined tasks and critical milestones, strict reporting and effective control through an on-line project management platform. The activities planned in the project follow the classical training cycle for adults: Identify needs; Design programme; Deliver training; Evaluate results. Results and impact The project outcome is a clarified learning model for training educators to contribute to the success of social entrepreneurs. The model consists of three main outputs: 1. Social Entrepreneurship Development Model - a very practical and easy-to-use handbook for educators and hands-on guidance that helps entrepreneurs carry out their social missions more effectively; 2. Train the Trainers Toolkit - providing educators with background knowledge and technical assistance to social entrepreneurs on-line; 3. Train the Investors Handbook equipping investors - mentors with practical knowledge and model of working with social entrepreneurs at risk. Other expected results: international conference on social entrepreneurship, two short term (5 days) testing courses - one on train the educators (trainers, mentors) and one on train the investors (financial mentors), fifty trained educators and investors, five project meetings open to the target group. Sustainability The methods and the achieved results will contribute to the understanding of the process of social enterprise management through the eyes of the educators in Europe who are involved in the entrepreneurship development and will be able to advance to specificity of the social entrepreneurship in a long term scale. With the outcome of the project the educators will be armed with a set of resources that will make the process of training, mentoring and networking for social entrepreneurs sustainable while facilitating their access to effective services and capital. In order to have longer term benefits the project presumes creating a sustainable network of stakeholders and selection processes open to a broader number of trainers and social business cases.
Context The BASET project was prepared and respectively implemented within the context of the rapid development of social entrepreneurship and the recent development of social impact that is sought by many companies and entrepreneurs. It is however still a problem for the organizations in this field to be productive and successful with the absent of educational, financial and other support and legal framework in many countries. BASET has two primary target groups since the very beginning - educators or trainers and investors. The educators include teachers and trainers, coaches, consultants, mentors, lecturers, SME experts, investors, and other professionals providing training and support services to entrepreneurs and companies. Throughout the project, we kept the broad group of educators as a common term and way of describing them. In our research phase, we confirmed and verified the need for training of these experts in order for them to do their business and trainings. Investors were the second group of the project. Business support and training organizations together with financial institutions were involved in many of the activities such as dissemination, verification, testing of the intellectual outputs. Their feedback was taken into consideration and everything was updated and finalized according to their expectations. They were equipped and trained on how to train and inspire social entrepreneurs to innovate, use adjusted for social business tools and templates, access to business networks and collected case studies of good practices and know-how on how to mentor and use new teaching methods based on gamification and visualization. Objectives The main objective of the project is to foster social entrepreneurship in Europe through elaborating, testing and providing a set of learning & training instruments to educators and investors. It is the different level of development of the law, the framework, the investments in the participating countries - BG, GR, BE, UK - that we leveraged on in order to fulfill the objective and support the social entrepreneurs as the ultimate results via preparation of the respective educators and investors for them. UK and BE have a solid background in social impact and businesses whereas BG and GR are still lagging behind with the law being under development. Partner organizations The partnership includes five participants from four countries: KISMC - non-profit organisation in Bulgaria with main focus on development of competencies for adults in innovation management, creativity and entrepreneurship; CEED – an experienced business support organization in the entrepreneurship development in Bulgaria; IDEC - a consultancy with an accredited lifelong learning centre in Greece organizing in-service training courses for teachers and trainers, informal learning and vocational training; Caban Capital - a fund manager in the UK providing opportunities for investors to invest in entrepreneurs through services each business requires to be successful; and Creative District - a Brussels-based organization supporting initiatives in the creative and cultural industries for societal impact through providing innovation spaces for guidance and support of entrepreneurs. Activities The activities were two main groups: development of results and materials, i.e. intellectual outputs and research; management activities covering quality assurance, project management, project preparation, monitoring and evaluation, dissemination, exploitation, and sustainability. They were undertaken in strict division and responsibility of all partners. Results and participants The project outcome is a clarified holistic model for training educators to contribute to the success of social entrepreneurs. The model consists of three main outputs: 1. Social Entrepreneurship Development Model - practical tool for educators and hands-on guidance that helps entrepreneurs carry out their social mission more effectively; 2. Train the Trainers Toolkit - providing educators with background knowledge, training package of templates, tools and exercises together with other materials in order to support them to train social entrepreneurs; 3. Train the Investors Handbook targeting directly investors who seek the social impact of their investment with the respective tools and new models that reflect the social value and risk. Additional results: international conference on social entrepreneurship, two short terms (5 days) training to test the outputs and verify results, testing of courses in focus groups and national seminars, fifty trained educators and investors, five project meetings open to the target group. Sustainability The project established the conditions - both technical and operational - for the ongoing development and support of social enterprises by sharing best practices, tools, new model and materials for training and investing in them.