Current agri-food sector business structure is problematic as this model has proved to have strong socio-economic and environmental impacts. Looking for innovative agricultural and food systems, able to deliver on social, economic and environmental objectives at multiple scales, has become essential. To foster the transition toward a sustainable agri-food industry models, several needs have to be overcome: - Change the business model. Agri-food entrepreneurs are in situations where there is a need to find and implement new innovative ways of creating, delivering and capturing value in order to be able to meet existing challenges and emerging opportunities. - Train agri-food stakeholders: education has an important role in the learning to think, and has to think about transition and responsiveness. Current crisis is related to culture and therefore is education related. - Attract new talents and managing ageing workforce in the industry. APPETITE project is aimed at developing a training proposal for: o Awareness rising of experienced agri-food entrepreneurs about their need for adaptation and innovation to make a transition toward a sustainable business model. o Development of new competences for youth and unemployed to apply innovation and sustainable schemes to the agri-food sector In order to reach this objective, 7 partners from 5 European countries: Turkey, Spain, Italy, France and Denmark, will form a strategic partnership bringing together different profiles and complementary expertise in order to develop a full set of activities relying on intergenerational peer learning. Indeed, the project will target two different groups: - Experienced agri-food entrepreneurs, who need to introduce change and innovation in their existing business. - Youth and unemployed, who need to better their chances of integration in the labour market and who will get to become a “change leader” These two groups will be involved directly all along the project during different activities, creating relationships of knowledge exchange and up-skill. The following activities will be developed in APPETITE: -Development of an Entrepreneurs training package, with contents dedicated to awareness rising about innovation need; work on cultural mindset changes and encouragement to open the business to younger generations, -The development of a youth package, with specific contents to attract them toward this sector and encourage them to use their technological skills to the benefit of the sector. The modules will include introduction to the agrifood business and their specificities, as well as the benefits of developing a professional career in this industry and how their open mind and IT skills can be beneficial for the transformation of the sector. - The development of intergenerational collaborative training modules, including information on apprenticeship programmes and workers mobility to introduce them to a framework for further collaboration. - An online cooperative platform, accessible online for the participant to have permanent access to the course. In addition, the platform will include the development of a collaborative area for exchanging information on the topic. All participants will thus be contributors to the training by helping each others to develop new solutions and share relevant information to go further in the different topics. The collaborative training modules will be developed to be imparted on site. Training workshops will take place bringing together both targets. As practical part of the training, binomials will be formed between one experienced entrepreneur / manager and one youth / unemployed. The entrepreneur will be in charge of establishing a study case based on his own experience and company, while the youth / unemployed will have to elaborate to propose a sustainable solution for him to better his business model and practice. The method chosen for the development of APPETITE is thus collaborative, participative, opened and progressive. As a result of this project, APPETITE expect to have a direct impact on the target group, by: Developing framed collaborations between youth and experienced entrepreneurs Increase and accelerate the innovation process in agrifood SMEs Contributing to the sustainability of the business models developed in the sector Better the introduction of youth on the food labour market Better the connection between the VET sector and the industry At long term, APPETITE has the ambition to have developed a transferable training model based on intergenerational dialogue and that could be replicated in other industrial sectors, fostering innovation, apprenticeship and labour insertion at EU level.
APPETITE Project was carried out for 2 years between December 2017 and November 2019. The APPETITE Project’s objective was developing training and practical education on enduring business models among an innovative training course addressing on experienced agri-food entrepreneurs and youth seeking for new work opportunities. APPETITE project focused development of a training aimed at awareness rising of experienced agri-food entrepreneurs about their need for adaptation and innovation to make a transition toward a sustainable business model; development of new competences for youth and unemployed to apply innovation and sustainable schemes to the agri-food sector. For this reason, project partners developed the learning journey in the project. The classification of the training contents in the 3 parts of the training course (Discovery, Incubation, Acceleration) and 1 part for optional (Transversal) developed structure of the course and allocation of the topics through ideas about how business models were created based in the Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. According to partner’s decision, the structure of the training course created the same for entrepreneurs and youths, but the contents of the course were different. Within this scope, under O1-A1 and O2-A1 (Researching course modules) were distributed training subjects to all partners by the leaders. Under O1-A2 and O2-A2 (Creation of a structured learning journey) learning journey was created. Under O3, the intergenerational contents created the expected dialogue between the two-target group and their collaboration toward sector innovation. The subjects are training activities; Introduction to Sustainability and CSR; Sustainable Development; Agri-food Value Chain 1 (value chain management); Agri-food Value Chain 2 (stakeholder management); Creativity and Innovation Skills; Stakeholder Management (Engagement); Stakeholder Maps and Prioritization Matrix; Sustainability Context Matrix; Business Modelling; Market Analysis (SWOT); Materiality Matrix; Sustainability Report; Action Plan; Change Management. Also, some modules are optional, the trainees have the possibility to improve their skills regarding: Circular economy; Industry 4.0; Globalization; Servitization; Open innovation; Social innovation; Social media and reputation; Cooperation and Team-working skills. Project partner, TATICS, created a project web site and training platform. All the training materials were uploaded the platform on each partners’ own language except Danish (www.appetiteproject.eu). The course contents aimed to test via two technical meetings in the application form; one of them was for the entrepreneurs under O1-A4 activity and the other was for youths under O2-A4 in each partner country. These two meetings were organised together as structure of the learning journey. So, it was decided that this structure would be well-organised and more useful for both entrepreneurs and youths. In the technical meetings, modules of the APPETITE course and functionalities of the platform and the decision that took the consortium to elaborate the course that way were explained during the events. Totally, 26 students, 20 entrepreneurs and 9 stakeholders were attended the technical meetings. Feedbacks were collected from the participants (Annex 1 – Technical Meetings Report). After the completion of all training materials, project partners organised a short-term blended activity (C1) for 5 days in Rome. The main objective of this activity was to test the intergenerational methodology developed APPETITE training and made pilot practice. Students, entrepreneurs and partner representatives, totally 20 participants, were attended the training activity. After the activity, all the participants filled the “Trainee’s competences questionnaire” and “Trainee’s satisfaction questionnaire” for evaluate and give feedbacks according to Validation Methodology. Also, project partners fill the “Trainer’s assessment” forms (Annex 2 – Minutes of C1 activity, Annex 3 - Validation Reports). Then, each country organised Multiplier Events (E) which targets a local territorial scale and FEDACOVA organised the final conference in Valencia, to present the conclusions of the project and to collect the feedbacks. Totally, 104 students, 57 entrepreneurs and 45 stakeholders attended these events; with extra 8 project partners participation to final conference (Annex 4 – Report of Local Multiplier Workshops). For the project sustainability and long-term impact, Exploitation Plan and Collaboration Agreement was prepared by SETBİR. After the project completion, the new competences and supporting Learning Management System will be completely developed, and maintenance activities will be sustained after the project end so that the delivered outputs can generate the expected positive impacts and spin-offs on the target groups (Annex 5 – Exploitation Plan and Collaboration Agreement).