Unemployment has risen dramatically across Europe over the last years and youth face even tougher conditions in entering the labour market. They have typically faced unemployment rates of double the adult level for more than a decade and the youth unemployment rate in the European Union stood at more than 17% in 2017. “To bring Europe back to growth and higher levels of employment, Europe needs more entrepreneurs”, Europe 2020 Strategy. Increase youth entrepreneurship is hard to achieve: 40% of youth indicate an interest in self-employment, but only 4% of them are really self-employed. How can we try to reduce this gap? A lot of measures for youth entrepreneurship have been put in recent years: project management trainings, financial supports, specific incubators,… But there is still much more to do to improve the social representations of entrepreneurship and success in the European culture. According to the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan, “there is a widespread culture that does not recognise or reward entrepreneurial endeavours enough and does not celebrate successful entrepreneurs, as role models who create jobs and income. To make entrepreneurship the growth engine of our economy, Europe needs a thorough, far-reaching cultural change.” How? By deconstructing social representations of entrepreneurship and success By raising awareness and enhancing informal skills of students for the experience of entrepreneurship By leading to confidence female students in entrepreneurship experience By fostering integration of entrepreneurship in initial training By enriching from the different cultures of the consortium to contribute to a wake-up call of our cultural clichés on entrepreneurship Who is precisely targeted? Ultimate target group: - Young qualified men and women from 16 to 25 years, currently students in vocational schools, graduate schools, universities, etc or just graduating. Educational target group: - Orientation advisors, teachers, directors of organisations of initial training: vocational schools, graduate schools, universities,… - Counsellors of organisations helping young job seekers What tools are in place to improve the situation? First, the project aims at defining the factors motivating young people to try launching a business, by comparing the situation in 4 European countries: France, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia. - IO1: A collection of testimonies highlighting entrepreneurs who started their business early on, in order to provide for the richest qualitative learnings the awareness and training tools of the project. Hence the objective of these testimonies is to collect key learnings from the real experiences of young entrepreneurs. Secondly on the basis of IO1 work, the objective is to conceive some educational tools for youth. These tools can be used by orientation advisors, teachers, counsellors to raise awareness on entrepreneurship potential for youth. - IO2: An educational video to deconstruct misrepresentations of entrepreneurship and success among young people. Examples of clichés: “you must have several years of professional experience to consider an entrepreneurship project”, “without personal financing, nothing is possible”, “to try entrepreneurship you must find a brilliant and innovative idea”, “you have to keep secret your project at the beginning”, “you should not write on your CV a short experience of entrepreneurship”,… - IO3: A serious game to show informal skills of young people for entrepreneurship. This serious game tells the typical day of a young student. The player can choose the activities of the young student: go to school, exchange with teachers/classmates, surf on social network, manage its student’ budget,… All these informal activities are then linked to the core entrepreneurial skills: create a professional network, find mentors, find peers, promote its project, manage a budget,… - IO4: In Europe, women are 52% of the world’s population but only 30% of the new companies are led by women. That's why the project aims at conceiving a specific Workshop Kit to give young women the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship. Presentation of young female role models to enhance their identification to entrepreneurship. - IO5: An Educational Ressource Kit which aims at convincing initial training organizations of the significance of raising awareness about youth entrepreneuship possibilities and entrepreneurial clichés. In addition, this Kit aims at providing them specific guidelines and educational tools to implement it in fieldwork.
In the last ten years unemployment has increased considerably in Europe. Young people are particularly affected. They face even more difficult conditions to enter the labor market. Did you know that the youth unemployment rate is twice the average rate! The Europe 2020 Strategy took up the issue and invested in the subject of entrepreneurship: “To bring Europe back to growth and higher levels of employment, Europe needs more entrepreneurs”. But making young people want to be an entrepreneur is not easy: 40% of young people indicate an interest in entrepreneurship, but only 4% of them actually try it. How can we try to reduce this gap? Numerous measures for youth entrepreneurship have been put in place in recent years: training in project management, financial support, specific incubators, etc. But much remains to be done to improve the social representations of entrepreneurship and success in European culture. According to the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan, “There is a widespread culture that does not recognize or sufficiently reward entrepreneurial efforts and does not celebrate successful entrepreneurs as role models that create jobs and income. To make entrepreneurship the engine of growth in our economy, Europe needs a profound cultural change “. How to react ? – by deconstructing social representations of entrepreneurship and success, – by raising awareness and promoting the informal skills of young people in entrepreneurship, – by creating the confidence of young women in the entrepreneurial adventure , – by promoting the integration of entrepreneurship awareness and training modules into initial training, – by learning from European cultural differences on the subject in order to shake up our stereotypes about youth entrepreneurship. This is why we have built a strategic cooperation partnership for innovation within the Erasmus + Youth and Sport program, funded with support from the European Commission. Five organizations from France, Ireland, Greece and Slovenia have looked into the subject to design the Toolbox that we present to you on the project’s website : stopentrepreneurialcliches.com For who? Ultimate target group: – Young qualified men and women. Educational target group: – Orientation advisors, teachers, directors of organisations of initial trainings, – Counsellors of organisations helping young job seekers. What tools have we designed to improve the situation? Firstly, we conduct a qualitative study to define what are the motivating factors and stereotypes preventing young people from embarking on entrepreneurship. - IO1: We conducted qualitative interviews in France, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia with entrepreneurs who have tried the adventure of young entrepreneurship. From this work, we learned 10 lessons shared in the report "Europe needs more entrepreneurs, and more young entrepreneurs". Secondly on the basis of IO1 work, we design a free Toolbox to educate young people about entrepreneurship. These tools can be used by orientation advisors, teachers, counsellors to raise awareness on entrepreneurship potential for youth. - IO2: The Video “10 reasons why young people shouldn’t set up their own company” to dismantle one by one the clichés linked to youth entrepreneurship, giving a voice to those who have started young. - IO3: The Serious Game “Entrepreneurial skills in daily activities” by sharing the life of Lea, Medhi and Max. The ordinary activities of these three young students highlight the informal skills useful in an entrepreneurial adventure. - IO4: The Turnkey Workshop “Entrepreneurship why not me?” to educate young women about entrepreneurship. Because young women are fewer than young men to choose entrepreneurship, it is crucial to make young women aware of the possibilities available to them by trying this adventure. The "Entrepreneurship, why not me?” is addressed particularly to them, by identifying with female role-models. - IO5: The Educational Ressource Kit for initial training organizations that includes: - A video teaser presenting the project's Toolbox demonstrating the importance of raising young people's awareness of entrepreneurship in order to encourage initial training organisations to integrate the subject into their training courses and to inform them that free tools are available to them. - An educational kit to put the tools in the toolbox into practice - A portfolio of European Good Practices to go further Teachers, guidance counselors, integration counselors… here you will find a free Toolbox to raise awareness of entrepreneurship among young people : stopentrepreneurialcliches.com