The number one priority of European Commission’s current president Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker is to support entrepreneurship and SMEs for creating new jobs and growth [http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/docs/pg_en.pdf#page=5] but after the current financial crisis in Europe, noone wants again a growth that is not based on ethical values. This has already been highlighted since sept 2011 in the meeting of the European Economic and Social Committee Employers’ Group titled “Business and Ethics”, which was held in Sopot (Poland) in the framework of the European Forum for New Ideas and under the leadership of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council that urged for a voluntary code of conduct for ethics in business. The meeting, which gathered EESC Members, business leaders, philosophers and journalists concluded that in order to avoid some of the mistakes that led to the financial crisis, a new economic order must be built in which ethics and morality play a more central role. As mentioned, the crisis of ethical values is not unknown in our days. However, it is evident to a great extent the crisis of ethics in entrepreneurship. Therefore, the education of ethics to students is directly linked to the concept of healthy entrepreneurship practices. Given the new social and economic reality, the cultivation of a new "culture" of entrepreneurship today is a matter of urgency and contributes, among others, to prevent unemployment and social exclusion of young people. However, based on an Euridice analysis, any school education across Europe on entrepreneurship has not received the proper attention and focus on multidisciplinary areas including ethics in order to form the foundations for a holistic and sustainable framework of entrepreneurship that is the main scope of this project. Based on the above analysis the main scope of ETHICSBOARD project is to address the identified challenges and opportunities with the following main objectives: 1. To apply in entrepreneurship education, codes of ethics and develop, from the early age, the sense of individual responsibility, to acquaint with the role of the leader and visionary, to acquaint and accept the general laws and rules under which a healthy business must operate 2. Develop elementary entrepreneurship skills based on ethical values in primary and secondary school education by using innovative and learner-centred pedagogical approaches. Special attention will be given also to diversified groups of learners (such as children refugees, asylum seekers and migrants) 3. Develop and advance an Ethics & Enterprise Portfolio that will follow an individual throughout their school education and will list each student’s ethical and entrepreneurship achievements 4. Develop open and innovative education solutions on Ethics and Entrepreneurship applicable for primary and secondary school education based on Open Education Resources (OER) 5. Improve collaboration between schools and parents’ associations in order to jointly form good and ethical role models for the children 6. Ensure that the benefits of an early childhood education on the ethics is transferred to other levels of school education and eventually from the classrooms to future European citizens 7. Develop critical thinking and stimulate student’s creative nature and motivation for ethical innovative thinking and cultivation of life skills (e.g. solving problems, responsible decision making, communication, self-awareness, interpersonal skills) The key results to be disseminated are the following that stakeholders (schools, pupils, policy makers, policy advisors of school education structures) should have high interest and benefits: -Training Curriculum on Entrepreneurship and Ethics that is expected to be disseminated all over Europe - Ethics and Entrepreneurship Portfolio that is expected to be adopted by may european countries as a mechanism for recognising skils acquired under ethics and entrepreneurship - Online course on Ethics and Entrepreneurship for allowing easy access to the project curricula from any school in Europe - Project handbook that will contain the project framework including use cases, good practices, lessons learned, methods and steps followed as well as the achievements made. University of Athens/Faculty of Primary Education is the initiator and coordinator of the project that is supported with two schools from Spain and Portugal and the Maraslio School Parents' Association and the three Maraslion Experimentary Schools as direct partners as well as with around 10 more schools and parents associations as indirect partners. Last but not least a european association, EPA (European Projects Association) based in Brussels/Belgium has been involved with previous successful records in supporting EU policies through the involvement in similar initiatives in the past of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and policy advisors and officers based in Brussels.
The idea of this project derived out of the first priority of ex European Commission’s president Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker for supporting entrepreneurship and SMEs for creating new jobs and growth overcoming the practices that led us to the economic crisis. The main idea was to develop a new curricula educating students, teachers and parents towards a new reality, new culture. The education of ethics to students is directly linked to the concept of healthy entrepreneurship practices. Given the new social and economic reality, the cultivation of a new "culture" of entrepreneurship was a matter of urgency and contributes, among others, to prevent unemployment and social exclusion of young people. The state of the art showed among other elements, the lack of a shared and common model of education in the topic of entrepreneurial education. Based on the above, the project addressed the identified challenges and opportunities with the following main objectives: 1. To apply in entrepreneurship education, codes of ethics and develop, from the early age, the sense of individual responsibility, to acquaint with the role of the leader and visionary, to acquaint and accept the general laws and rules under which a healthy business must operate 2. Develop elementary entrepreneurship skills based on ethical values in primary and secondary school education by using innovative and learner-centered pedagogical approaches. Special attention will be given also to diversified groups of learners (such as children refugees, asylum seekers and migrants) 3. Develop and advance an Ethics & Enterprise Portfolio that will follow an individual throughout their school education and will list each student’s ethical and entrepreneurship achievements 4. Develop open and innovative education solutions on Ethics and Entrepreneurship applicable for primary and secondary school education based on Open Education Resources (OER) 5. Improve collaboration between schools and parents’ associations in order to jointly form good and ethical role models for the children 6. Ensure that the benefits of an early childhood education on the ethics is transferred to other levels of school education and eventually from the classrooms to future European citizens 7. Develop critical thinking and stimulate student’s creative nature and motivation for ethical innovative thinking and cultivation of life skills (e.g. solving problems, responsible decision making, communication, self-awareness, interpersonal skills) The main outputs that the consortium developed and disseminated were: - A training curriculum of all stakeholders (eg. students, educators, parents). - A Learning and Teaching portfolio to be used in school and private life of students - An Online course on Ethics and Entrepreneurship for allowing easy access to the project curricula from any school in Europe - A handbook of Good practices that were applied during the implementation of the project but they couldn't be part of the curricula. - A policy recommendations review to be disseminated in National and European Level, that was of great acceptance among the policy makers. - A project observatory to populate the achievements of the project. The consortium of the project was: the University of Athens/Faculty of Primary Education who was the initiator and coordinator of the project that is supported with two schools from Spain and Portugal and the Maraslio School Parents' Association and the three Maraslion Experimentary Schools as direct partners as well as with around 10 more schools and parents associations as indirect partners. The European Projects Association based in Brussels/Belgium that has been involved with previous successful records in supporting EU policies through the involvement in similar initiatives in the past of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and policy advisors and officers based in Brussels. The people this project reached was beyond our expectations as it is estimated that more than 6000 unique persons have been directly or indirectly involved in this project.