Blue Social Growth’ is an experimental pedagogical plan for the training of the populations living in small islands to address their pressing issues- like the recent immigration and refugees’ crisis- through developing blue growth economy social enterprises from the merge of the land with the sea. It predominantly targets prospective social entrepreneurs, focusing migrants and refugees by establishing socially innovative, scalable and financially sustainable ventures. The target group addressed promotes a cross-disciplinary approach in the social entrepreneurship sector and incorporates collaborative and co-creation approaches by bringing together stakeholders from different groups of the Blue Growth sector, including European networks on tourism, fishery and small islands; blue growth and social entrepreneurship incubators; blue growth social entrepreneurs ‘start-uppers’; ship-owners; academics and policy makers, non-profits and non-governmental organizations that address issues related to the sea and refugee crisis, digital entrepreneurs, trainers and educators, and collaborative ventures between marginalized groups and bottom of the pyramid populations. The objective of the training programme are twofold on one hand co-sharing and co-creation through transformational engagement of bottom of the pyramid-BoP populations as value creation for survival and growth. On the other hand through learning from new approaches of action learning, inductive approaches and design thinking methodologies to develop the skills needed for social innovation and social collaborative entrepreneurship such as questioning, challenging, dreaming, imagining, experimenting, learning, problem solving, critical thinking. The partnership consists of 5 partners from 4 European countries capturing the stakeholder themselves, that is the small islands of Europe, in an intercultural approach trying to include all major regions in need from the North to the South and from the East to the West. We include the regions where refugee and immigration crisis are found, including Greek Small islands, Sardinia Island in Italy, the Islands and Coastal region of Spain, The Small Islands of Scotland. All partners are strategically situated in the areas of supporting small islands populations, development of entrepreneurship, in supporting the livelihoods of small islands inhabitants. The methodology of the project is mostly adapted to meet the geographical isolation characteristics and the seasonality of small islands life. Therefore the methodology is mainly e-based through live streaming of many of the activities to reach as more participants as possible. We firstly conduct an exploratory mixed methods research based on which the content of the e-learning programme will be designed, then e-Handbooks, e-Textbooks and e-modules are developed which will be integrated in the e-learning platform that we will create a number of multiplier events with local communities for early on engagement. The pilot learning programme will begin after a pre-testing by the partners and by a small sample of the target population. The recruiting of the pilot will take place making sure that the right mixture of participants will have been recruited in all 4 partner countries. A number of live streaming F2F workshops, e-mentoring sessions and events will take place to support the prospective social entrepreneurs. The training will last 6 months leaving time for reflection and application of theory into practice. At the end of the programme the participants will take part in the closing conference where they will have the opportunity to pitch and showcase their work to investors and sponsors. They will also have the opportunity to be awarded one of the excellence social entrepreneurship awards that will be given at the final conference. Dissemination will take place through short videos to be shared through our social media chanels recording the stories of best cases, participants and experts. The expected impact of the programme and its benefits are: the development of social enterprises to tackle the pressing issues of European small islands societies through transformational social impact and social value creation, like in the areas of refugees’ and immigrants integration. Through the development of collaborative inclusive social enterprise ventures that result from the interaction among the sea and the earth. To promote the size and breadth of the social investment market investing in small islands by pulling angel investors, social VCs and other investment institutions to the social entrepreneurship sector and by pushing social entrepreneurs to investors through training on investment readiness, pitching and operational due diligence. The outcomes of the programme offer experimental information for research and executive education and contribute to the development of the EU as an advanced inclusive responsible knowledge-based society.
Blue Social Growth’ was an experimental pedagogical plan for the training of the populations living in small islands to address their pressing issues- like the recent immigration and refugees’ crisis- through developing blue growth economy social enterprises from the merge of the land with the sea. The project involved prospective social entrepreneurs with a migrant and refugee background. The target group addressed promoted a cross-disciplinary approach in the social entrepreneurship sector and incorporated collaborative and co-creation approaches by bringing together stakeholders from different groups of the Blue Growth sector, including European networks on tourism, fishery and small islands, blue growth and social entrepreneurship incubators, blue growth social entrepreneurs ‘start-uppers’, ship-owners, academics and policy makers, non-profits and non-governmental organizations that address issues related to the sea and refugee crisis, digital entrepreneurs, trainers and educators, and collaborative ventures between marginalized groups and bottom of the pyramid populations. The objective of the training programme was twofold on one hand co-sharing and co-creation through transformational engagement of bottom of the pyramid-BoP populations as value creation for survival and growth. On the other hand through learning from new approaches of action learning, inductive approaches and design thinking methodologies to develop the skills needed for social innovation and social collaborative entrepreneurship such as questioning, challenging, dreaming, imagining, experimenting, learning, problem solving, critical thinking. The partnership consisted of 5 partners from 4 European countries capturing the stakeholder themselves, that is the small islands of Europe, in an intercultural approach trying to include all major regions in need from the North to the South and from the East to the West. The project included the regions where refugee and immigration crisis are found, including Greek Small islands, Sardinia Island in Italy, the Islands and Coastal region of Spain, The Small Islands of Scotland. All partners are strategically situated in the areas of supporting small islands populations, development of entrepreneurship, in supporting the livelihoods of small islands inhabitants. The methodology of the project was adapted to meet the geographical isolation characteristics and the seasonality of small islands life. Therefore the methodology was mainly e-based through live streaming of many of the activities to reach as more participants as possible. Partners firstly conducted an exploratory mixed methods research based on which the content of the e-learning programme were designed, then Handbook and e-modules were developed and integrated in the e-learning platform. The pilot learning programme began after a pre-testing by the partners and by a small sample of the target population. The recruiting of the pilot took place during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions which constitued a criticality for all partners, however the total envisaged number of testers was reached. The expected impact of the programme and its benefits were: the elaboration of business plans related to the creation of social enterprises to tackle the pressing issues of European small islands societies through transformational social impact and social value creation, like in the areas of refugees’ and migrants integration. Through the development of collaborative inclusive social enterprise ventures that result from the interaction among the sea and the earth. The outcomes of the programme offered experimental information for research and executive education and contributed to the development of the EU as an advanced inclusive responsible knowledge-based society.