The European Union promotes entrepreneurship as a key factor for competitiveness and has highlighted the importance of advancing a European entrepreneurial culture by fostering the right mind-set and entrepreneurship-related skills. The need to improve the entrepreneurial and innovative capabilities of citizens is also underlined in three of the flagship initiatives in the Europe 2020 strategy for jobs and sustainable growth: "Innovation Union", "Youth on the Move" and "An agenda for new skills and jobs". Enhancing creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training is also a long-term objective for 'Education and Training 2020', the strategic framework for European cooperation. Start-up businesses and SMEs (EC on Eurostat data '14) the main source of employment. The Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020 underlines that in order to foster Europe growth, employment and competitiveness there is a need of "more entrepreneurs and start-ups". The Council invites the Member States to "provide more services to support business start-up and promote the opportunities and perspectives of self-employment". The Action Plan 2020 and the Small Business Act strongly focus on the need to promote entrepreneurship spirit and business culture, supporting the business creation training and raising new generations of entrepreneurs. The Council suggests to the Member States to "encourage schools, VET providers and employment services to actively promote entrepreneurship providing guidance, support on entrepreneurship and self-employment also through entrepreneurship training courses". The Eurydice survery (2014) "Entrepreneurial education" highlighted the following gaps in terms of competences, skills and knowledge: communication, presentation, planning, definition and creation of a business plan and idea. The traditional training programmes mainly focus on the definition of the business idea and the implementation of a sustainable the Business Plan. Alongside a few of events are organized in order to allow young aspiring entrepreneurs to present their idead to Venture Capital as funding opportunities. These programmes are incomplete, not taking into the right consideration the innovation (both in terms of content and process) represented by IT and the social side of the web, such as the process: business model>digital personal/brand and corporate storytelling>pitching>fundraising. This innovation is crucial for the entrepreneurs success. Following a consolidated process for development and transfer of innovation, the project will essentially do 4 things: 1) define an innovative business start-up support curriculum for adult learners merging in a single learning process a set of competencies as best practices coming from 5 EU countries. 2) Define and run a train-the-trainers programme on the delivery of the business start-up support curriculum 3) Pilot and fine-tune the business start-up support curriculum for adult learners in 5 countries 4) Implement an web community platform as a reference point for trainers active in entrepreneurship and business start-up training to share resources, follow-up projects and discussions The key elements of the training programmes (both for aspiring entrepreneurs and for trainers) will be: 1. Employability skills 2. Business Model Canvas for start up: new strategies to identify the value proposition 3. Digital Storytelling for personal branding 4. Digital Corporate storytelling and 5. Pitching: entrepreneurship projects presentation strategies and techniques 6. Fundraising/Crowdfunding new strategies and sources for fundraising: new funding strategie and sources OBJECTIVES: 1. Provide the adult sector with an innovative curriculum provinding aspiring entrepreneurs with a set of innovative integrated competences strengthening their competitiveness and the resilience of their business 2. Support aspiring adult entrepreneurs in identification of business opportunities. 3. Provide the adult sector with a continuous update of the teaching/learning resources via a small scale collective awareness platform 4. Boosting, as a general approach, entrepreneurship as one of the main strategies to reduce unemployment rates, especially among excluded groups. Main target groups: - Trainers/teachers active in the delivery of business start-up and entrepreneurship training programme - adult learners (especially unemployed, at risk of social exclusion, low educated).
Entrepreneurship is seen as one of the 8 key competences for lifelong learning. Entrepreneurship curricula in primary education continue to evaluate, but focus mainly on the development of relevant training materials, support tools for secondary and tertiary VET teachers and universities. At present, there is no new approach to adult skills and entrepreneurship. Adult learners represent a group of the unemployed, the excluded, often without proper entrepreneurship education. Even if they are ready to start their own business, they do not have TIK skills, social competences as younger EU citizens. The YouBrand project responds to this need. The YouBrand Project - Storytelling and Pitching for Start-ups (YouBrand) was implemented from 31 December 2017 to 30 December 2019 within the framework of ERASMUS+ Adult Education. The main objective of the project was to create innovative tools for entrepreneurship education and to test them. The YouBrand project has achieved the following objectives: shaping a proactive entrepreneurial mindset as a means of reducing unemployment, improving entrepreneurial education, providing services to support business start-ups and promote self-employment opportunities, creating a programme for start-ups to strengthen their TIK competences, creativity, innovation, providing continuous updating of teaching / learning resources through a small-scale collective awareness platform, dissemination of results and products developed within the project. The YouBrand project supports the above mentioned priorities through:1) Creation and testing of an innovative training model / programme for the development of disadvantaged young people (NEET) of the following key competences: initiative and entrepreneurship, digital literacy and creativity. (O1) 2)Define and test a trainer pathway to introduce digital innovation into the training model to support start-ups in their development path. (O2) 3)Design and implementation of a web portal aimed at making available the developed training concepts, information and exchange of experiences and good practices. (O3) Key elements of the training programmes developed within the project: 1. knowledge and practical skills in human resources management, in particular in the area of recruitment, selection, motivation; 2. Business model canvas; 3. Digital corporate Storytelling; 4. Personal Branding; 5. Corporate Storytelling; 6. Pitching Fundraising & Crowdfunding. As part of the project, a YouTube channel was created with videos and interviews presenting business experiences of entrepreneurs with brand awareness building. Also as part of the project, five conferences were organized: the first conference with a min. 60 participants took place in Lublin, the second conference with min. 30 participants took place in Cartaya, the third conference with min. 30 participants was held in Birningham, the fourth conference with min. 30 participants took place in Larissa, the fifth conference with min. 60 participants took place in Rome. Project activities involved the following target groups: 30 beginning entrepreneurs, 20 trainers, 20 people connected with vocational training directly participated in the development of training programs, 15 representatives of public institutions involved in activities concerning opinions, advice and suggestions, 15 trainers directly participated in training activities YouBrand, 210 interested people took part in conferences. During the project four project meetings were organized: in Rome, Warsaw, Athens and Lublin. YouBrand has a significant impact on participating trainers, young people, entrepreneurs and key partners, stakeholders and the wider community. However, the focus is on strengthening young people who have the opportunity to start a business in order to successfully enter the labour market, increasing their resilience and vocational training, as well as shaping their entrepreneurial spirit. Trainers directly benefit from project activities and intellectual products, by continuing to use training in their professional activities and updating their professional profiles with new teaching techniques and ICT skills, improve their knowledge and develop new skills, update their pedagogical skills through the exchange of training materials, engage in the design and implementation of an online community of trainers on entrepreneurship, engage in European teamwork and interdisciplinary cooperation, broaden their horizons, experience different European cultures and improve their knowledge of different communities. Young people: They will receive a set of innovative technical competences and skills to increase their chances of success in a start-up process, they will receive knowledge and skills to help them succeed in the labour market, they are supported by an international team in developing a business idea, they are in direct contact with entrepreneurs, improving their business skills through the development of sustainable business contacts, they improve their decision-making skills, communicate their ideas, improve their language, social and presentation skills, develop and improve their digital ability to work with different sources of information, develop a higher level of cultural awareness and understanding of social and business issues, and improve and develop self-awareness and self-esteem in terms of their knowledge, talents and skills. Entrepreneurs: develop skills to contribute effectively to the education of the young generation of entrepreneurs, appreciate the knowledge, skills and ideas that young people can bring to the labour market, business, improve business skills through the development of sustainable business contacts, receive new suggestions and opinions on the potential for further development of their business. Partners: improved education by adding innovative content and processes to their training offer, equipped their employees with new skills and competences, created a network of cooperation. Institutions: obtained results of the project as a practice of supporting the labour market and social integration policy of adult learners, received access to the YouBrand programme. The 2020 Entrepreneurship Action Plan envisages the creation of SME as the main source of employment. It stresses that in order to boost European growth, employment and competitiveness there is a need to create new businesses and innovative start-ups. Member States should provide more services to support and promote business start-ups. They should focus on the need to promote entrepreneurial and business spirit, training new generations of entrepreneurs, encourage schools, education centres, universities, training institutions and labour market institutions to actively support entrepreneurship. The biggest gaps in terms of competences, skills and entrepreneurial knowledge are: problems with communication, presentation, planning, definition and development of business plans and creativity. Investing in education for entrepreneurship supports economic growth and the creation of enterprises. The YouBrand project supports these objectives and bridges the gaps in terms of competence, skills and entrepreneurial knowledge.