The project "BECOMING A SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR" comes from a brainstorming made by students in school meetings about how their ideal school and town should be. Students have a clear idea of their school and town needs so we decided to create an Erasmus+ project to exchange and enrich our ideas. Since we were already working in an eTwinning project with three countries having the same feeling, it was easy for us to get on with it. We created four different projects (one for each national team) with the main core of social entrepreneurship as our students will be the responsible of solving the needs they discover. The SPANISH project will include in our curriculum the creation of an animation group with its music band parade and stilts. The GREEK project consists in promoting sport tourism as one of the main possible working opportunities of Crete society. The POLISH project consists in rebuilding and creating new cycling lanes of the town to promote healthy lifestyle. The AUSTRIAN project lies in creating an elderly care home visitation program inlcuded in the curriculum. In the first year, every country is going to develop its own project and during the mobilities, students of the hosting country will teach their peers about the activities of their project. In the second year each school will develop the three other projects learnt, working in different groups with cooperative work and teaching their mates about what they will carry out. While preparing the project and as mentioned in the description of the activities, students will develop skills needed in future entrepreneurship and employment like creativity, flexibility, team work, management of time, planning and organizing, coping with stress, self-presentation and commercial awareness. They will become more aware of using English as an international communication tool. They will improve ICT skills and develop self-confidence. The project will fulfill the objectives of the programme "Europe 2020" which aims to deal with innovation, education, social inclusion and the reduction of unemployment.Teachers will improve their work using integrative methodologies such as portfolio, problem-based learning and shared teaching among foreign colleagues.They will be integrated among teachers from both their schools and partner schools so that the project has a truly transversal and integrating approach in the curriculum. The target groups for the project are the students -not only the participants but also all the students in each school- the teachers, the students' families and local communities.The project is innovative as it works on social entrepreneurship and it establishes links and professional relationships between each school and external professionals and promotes a creative association of the partner schools with local associations of the town.The organization of each project is a final step to be achieved after each phase of work and cooperation, first working online from each school and later in the meetings. Each school will organize activities and classes in which students will prepare, conduct and analyse surveys. They will solve possible problems of the project. They will also take part in meetings and workshops organized by teachers who will stimulate their work. Teachers and students will use English language and ICT tools.There will be 2 teachers' meetings and 4 teachers and students' meetings. Teachers' meetings will be mainly for organizational aims but there will also be workshops and seminars organized for them. The total number of target participants will be more than 220 but the project will embrace almost all the students in all schools and all the teachers. In students' meetings the main activity will be the teaching of each country's project to their peers at the place. Students of the other countries will have received online previous information about the other countries' projects so that they will solve possible questions/problems. An important element of the meetings will be the meaningful learning of each country project and then the other countries will be able to develop the project taught to their own country having experienced the project in person. Parallely, different workshops will be held on students' self-development through different activitites. In some of them they will try to boast their self-confidence through the use of social skills in the workshops carried out by psychologists and school pedagogues. Apart from that, there will be other socializing activities both online and face to face. It is essential to evaluate in each school all activities to have constant improvement of the actions taken in the project. So, the coordination will stimulate and control the evaluation. All activities, meetings, chats, presentations, worksheets, etc. will be recorded, photographed and reported online by students and teachers to different platforms in order to work and encourage students to be in constant touch with their peers.
The project “Becoming social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship to activate the beating of our schools and our towns” was a strategic partnership that started in September 2017 and finished i n August 2019. The project was mutually developed by partner organisations from Austria, Greece, Poland and Spain. The idea of the project was to exchange and enrich our students’ ideas about their schools and towns needs. We created four different projects as every country had its own need(s), then, during the mobilities all the countries l earnt about the j ob done i n each country i n order to copy or modify their partner’s project to be included in their school’s curriculum. The Spanish project was to included in the curriculum the creation of an animation group with i ts music band parade and stilts. Students taught to their partners how to build the stilts, their trousers, how to walk on them, and how to play a specific Catalan instrument called “gralla”. Our partners, built their own stilts in the different countries with the help of the information gathered during the Spanish mobility. The Greek project consisted in promoting sport tourism as one of the main possible working opportunities of Crete society. During the mobility, Cretan students shared their work: how to create a webpage, how to make olive oil soap and how to track a trail into a beautiful landscape that can be done by tourists. Again, in the other countries we created a webpage of the project with the Greek information, we did the workshop of making olive oil soaps and we tracked a trail. In Spain, for instance, we tracked a trail done as a family and school venue being an evening walk around the village. The Polish project consisted in rebuilding and creating new cycling lanes of the town to promote healthy lifestyle. Polish students also learnt about making a homemade energy drink for doing sport and during the mobility, all countries learnt about the cycling lanes and the creation of this energy drink. Once more, all the four countries developed a similar project in their own countries regarding the government l aws on cycling and nature, something that our students also learnt. The Austrian project lied in creating an elderly care home visitation program included in the curriculum. Also during the mobilities all countries were taught about how did they do it and then the different countries developed charity programmes in their own countries copying the same i dea or changing i t. In some countries l ike Greece and Poland they decided to create a charity fair with homemade products and they gave the money to charity projects. The Austrian and Spanish team decided to i nvolve students in spending their free time doing some activities such as visiting the elderly care home in Austria or, in Spain, going to primary school to help students to read, going to the kindergarten to prepare some games for toddlers, etc. Our students learnt that they can invest money on charity as well as investing their free time. The aim of the project was developing the youth worker’s competences for empowerment of youth through entrepreneurship education and social i nclusion of the school within each towns/schools’ needs. During the first year of the project, every country developed their own project and during the mobilities, students of the hosting country taught their peers about the activities of their project. In the second year, each school developed the three other projects l earnt, working i n different groups with cooperative work and teaching their mates about what they carried out. While preparing the project, students developed skills needed in future entrepreneurship and employment i ke creativity, flexibility team work,managements of time, planning and organizing, coping with stress ,self-presentation and commercial awareness.. They became more aware of using English as an international communication tool and that’s what they specifically discovered during mobilities while l iving with hosting families. They also i mproved ICT skills and developed self-confidence. The project fulfilled the objectives of the programme “Europe 2020” which aims to deal with i nnovation, education, social i nclusion and the reduction of unemployment. Teachers improved their work using interactive methodologies, problem-based learning and shared teaching among foreign colleagues done by different meetings, Skypes as well as the job-shadowing done in each country during the mobilities. Teachers were integrated among teachers from both their schools and partners schools so that the project had a truly transversal and i ntegrating approach in the curriculum. The project reached to all the target groups expected: students -not only the participants but also all the students in each school- the teachers, the students’ families and local communities. The project was innovative as i t worked on social entrepreneurship and our students learnt how to be useful to their schools as well as to their towns by means of the ideas they had.