In response to the world financial and ethical crisis and to European key policy objectives our project is focused on improving the 21st century skills of our students by developing their entrepreneurial skills enriched with social added value. Therefore, students, especially the less able, should be exposed to alternative activities in order to discover their talents and acquire the means to put them to practice to achieve success. As the main role of education is to create ethical and democratic adults, we will integrate the innovative approach of social entrepreneurship∙ According to the European Commission social entrepreneurship is about addressing severe social challenges and meeting social needs in an innovative way, while serving the general interest and common good for the benefit of the community (www.oecd.org). By experiencing Social Entrepreneurship students will develop their entrepreneurial skills along with their social responsibility, social and moral values. They will also practice and improve skills like critical and ethical thinking and action, decision making, team building, creativity, communication, presentation, problem solving, self-respect and self-control. Social entrepreneurship also includes the aspect of green entrepreneurship, which promotes the development of a sustainable environmental thinking that all enterprises should promote. It includes furthermore Cultural entrepreneurship where a conventional business invests some portion of its profits on culturally beneficial activities. Social entrepreneurship is an innovative approach in the educational matters not only in Europe but also worldwide. In order to benefit more of this approach we decided in implementing Social Entrepreneurial activities using CLIL (Content Integrated Language Learning) and through the Arts (Painting, Sculpting, Weaving, Printing, Animation, Video Art) and Cultural Heritage (tangible and intangible). As 2018 will be the Year of Cultural Heritage, we decided to celebrate our diverse cultural heritage across Europe at European and national level. The aim of the European Year of Cultural Heritage is to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe's cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space Teachers, students and the community will be educated in the theoretical and practical dimensions of social entrepreneurship and cultural heritage! The objectives of the project are to develop the teachers, the students and the community with the teaching and learning skills on social and green entrepreneurship. Participants derive form six countries: Cyprus (2 schools), Slovenia, Bulgaria, Spain and Croatia. Each school has experience of participating in European projects and in collaboration through eTwinning projects. The project will support all teaching staff, students, parents and wider school communities. The reason for suggesting a project consisted by five different countries is due to the fact that our subjects are a "priority" now in Europe. We are keen on implementing social entrepreneurship through the arts to students from 4 to 12 years old! Activities will include: -Sharing information about each other’s schools, countries and contexts through locally produced videos. -The development of PADLET, eTwinning, Facebook page and website to share ideas, activities and results on the issues of Entrepreneurship, fine arts, cultural heritage and CLIL -Training sessions to develop teacher skills in delivering an entrepreneurship curriculum -Curriculum development, lesson plans and programmes for cross curricular entrepreneurship learning -The development and operation of social enterprises , which include the application of entrepreneurial skills and results in raising funds supporting a good cause. -The dissemination of the project activities and results through the media The envisaged impact and results will firstly include up skilled teachers who understanding how to deliver an engaging curriculum that promotes social entrepreneurship and supports the development of life skills in their students. We expect highly involved students, of all ages, who have a good understanding of social entrepreneurship and the ways this could be experienced through the cultural heritage education. The impact is expected to be particularly relevant to disadvantaged students where the focus is on removing barriers to their success and increasing equality of opportunity. The project will also enhance the development of wider skills for teachers and students including language, communication, ICT and global awareness. Materials from the project will be widely available for the use of educators across Europe. Results will include THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLAN and THE GUIDE FOR SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS. The evaluation of the project will be applied in terms of qualitative and quantitative research (pre and post questionnaires, interviews).
In response to the world financial and ethical crisis and to European key policy objectives the current project focused on improving the 21st century skills of students by developing their entrepreneurial skills enriched with social and environmental added value. Therefore, students, especially the less able, were exposed to alternative entrepreneurial activities in order to discover their talents and acquire the means to put them to practice to achieve success. As the main role of education is to create ethical and democratic adults, we integrated an innovative approach of social entrepreneurship, the environmental (green) entrepreneurship. Environmental entrepreneurship, is a type of social entrepreneurship, exercised to resolve environmental challenges, towards the efficient operation of the market and for the enhancement of ecological sustainability (Dean and McMullen, 2007). It aims to create simultaneous economic and ecological benefit (Thompson, Kiefer and York, 2011). In order to benefit more from this approach we implemented Environmental Entrepreneurial activities using CLIL (Content Integrated Language Learning) and through the Arts (Painting, Sculpting, Weaving, Printing, Animation, Video Art) and Cultural Heritage (tangible and intangible). As 2018 was the Year of Cultural Heritage, we decided to celebrate our diverse cultural heritage across Europe. The aim of the European Year of Cultural Heritage was to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe's cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space. The objectives of the project was to equip the teachers, the students and the community with the teaching and learning skills on social and green entrepreneurship. Participants derived form six countries: Cyprus (2 schools), Slovenia, Bulgaria, Spain and Croatia. Each school offered equally in the project, addressing the learning procedures with detail and enriching their existing curriculum with environmental entrepreneurial activities. Activities included meeting each other, both physically and virtually, holding special events in each partner school, train the staff to meet and enrich entrepreneurial teaching skills, curriculum development for cross curriculum learning and community engagement and learning. The innovative curriculum implementation included raising students' awareness on the environmental and cultural heritage issues that local communities confront, suggest viable solutions, thus design and create them. In the end, students created mini companies that suggested viable products for promoting the local cultural heritage. The most valuable result of this project was the development of cultural heritage products for kids, to enhance cultural heritage awareness and engagement. Profits that came of the products sales were donated to cultural non-profit foundations or companies in order to support their cause. A quick search in the project's activities will reveal that all stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, community) were educated in the theoretical and practical dimensions of environmental entrepreneurship and cultural heritage! The project had a dissemination strategy including the development of Social Media pages in Facebook and Instagram, Website, eTwinning page, Padlet and communication of the activities in local media. Partner schools included news on the project development in Parents' newsletter and on their websites and social media pages. The evaluation of the programme was based on a mixed method approach. The quantitative approach was held in terms of pre and post questionnaires in order to assess students knowledge, skills, roles and environmental agency . The qualitative approach included the interviews of the participating teachers on 1.their overall experience in this innovative programme and 2. whether the programme we developed and practiced had positive results on students learning results, as well as observation during the implementation during all the 10 lessons in two of the participating classes. According to the evaluation results, by experiencing Environmental Entrepreneurship students developed their entrepreneurial skills along with the development of their environmental agency. More specifically, they improved skills like critical and ethical thinking and action, decision making, team building, creativity, communication, presentation, problem solving, self-respect and self-control. Additionally, observations and interviews with teachers led to the refinement of the initial syllabus, namely the 'Environmental Entrepreneurship Guide'. The impact and results include up skilled teachers with understanding of environmental entrepreneurship education and students who are environmentally and entrepreneurially aware and will become agents of change in the future.