The project “Entrepreneurial Skills - The Drive Behind New Businesses” will teach students how to come up with ideas, how to develop those ideas and eventually how to turn those ideas into viable business plans directed at solving environmental, social or economic issues. It will give students an increased sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. The partners in this project are five schools in Romania, Turkey, Greece, Spain and Sweden. All schools teach entrepreneurship, like how to develop a business idea, how to create a budget and a business plan. This project will focus on actually finding the ideas worth developing into viable business plans. It will contain four workshops in four of the partner countries. In these workshops students will work in small groups with participants from the other project countries. The first assignment in to get to know the other group memebers so students will frst be sujected to a number of team building activities. After that the focus will shift to solving a social, economic or environmental issue of one of the project countries. The hosting country decides the issue. In the workshops students will use specific methods and exercises decided and taught by the participating teachers and aimed at helping students brainstorm, develop ideas and think outside the box. The last day of the workshop, students will present their soliútions to the other students and participating teachers. In between mobilities students will cooperate in four assignments that will be done in their local courses and shared over the internet on a Twinspace site. The project will also benefit participating teachers since it will teach participating teachers new methods that they can bring back to their schools and teach their colleagues. These methods can be transferred into other subjects and will live on after the project has ended. The methods are focused on getting students to practice and improve entrepreneurial competences. The project has the following objectives: 1. That students will improve their entrepreneurial competences: collaboration skills, ethical and sustainable thinking, self-awareness, motivation, perseverance, financial and economic literacy, planning and management, as well as the ability to spot opportunities, value ideas, mobilize resources, mobilize others, take the initiative, cope with uncertainty and learn through experience. 2. That teachers will practice and learn new methods of how to teach students improve these entrepreneurial competences, and that teachers can apply these methods to other subjects. 3. That students at the end of the project have a good knowledge of the European labor market and what it is like to run a company in the different partner countries. 4. That students during entrepreneurship workshops in the international meetings come up with viable ideas that potentially can be developed into real businesses. 5. That students learn to always consider sustainability when brainstorming new ideas. In each workshop four students from each country will participate. In all schools all students will have an equal opportunity to join the project since the selection process is based on an application that students write, rather than school results. In the assignments done in between mobilities, all students in a local course can participate. These assignments are researching the specifics of starting a business in the partner countries, analyzing the EU labor market, writing a business plan and making a SWOT analysis of social entrepreneurship. The idea is that the results of the project will be used after the project ends. The methodological tool kit is one result that will live on after the project has ended. Another result that will live on is the new ideas and input into entrepreneurship teaching that teachers will get from the partner school teachers. Not only will they be able to study close at hand how to write a business plan in another country, they will also be able to give a broader European perspective when teaching starting a business, running a company and the labor market. The project is focused on one of the eight key competences for life-long learning, entrepreneurship, and it touches upon two more, those of language and communication, and personal, social and learning competence. This ensures that theresults of the project, the improvement of the participating students’ entrepreneurial competences, will continue to be of importance for the individual for life. The project will also serve as a reminder of the importance of social entrepreneurship something that is often overlooked when teaching entrepreneurship. Another objective of the project is that students actually come up with solutions to social issues that are so good that they can be developed into real businesses in their local countries. A few years on this project may have lead to new business creation in the participating countries.
The project “Entrepreneurial Skills - The Drive Behind New Businesses” taught students how to come up with ideas, develop them and turn those ideas into viable business plans directed at solving environmental, social or economic issues. There were five partner schools in this project: Spain, Greece, Turkey, Romania and Sweden. At the start of the project, all schools taught entrepreneurship alternatively were actively looking to set up an entrepreneurship program. The LTT activities that took place included three workshops in the partner countries Turkey, Spain and Greece. In these workshops the participants practiced their entrepreneurial skills, such as generating ideas, communication, problem solving, presentation skills and collaboration. The participants were divided into small groups with one student from each partner school. The objective of the workshops was to come up with business plans helping to solve a local problem . The local problems students were to focus on solving were the concern of devastation of trees in Finike, the issue of homelessness in Barcelona and plastic waste in the Mediterranean outside Athens. The last workshop in Sweden was first postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and then finally done as a virtual activity in which the participants, in their respective countries, worked on ideas that would help people cope with the pandemic. The subject of this workshop was changed from air pollution in the city of Gothenburg asthe participants were unable to travel to Gothenburg to learn more of the problem. In all workshops students used specific methods and exercises taught by the participating teachers aimed at helping students brainstorm, develop ideas and think outside the box. The last day of the workshop the students presented their business plans, i.e. solutions to the local problem, to the participants, students and staff of the local schools and local entrepreneurs and businessmen. In the digital workshop the business ideas were presented online in a digital meeting. The workshops were either taught by the local teachers or co-taught by local and visiting teachers from the partner countries, depending on how experienced the teachers were at teaching entrepreneurship. The methods used were written down in a methodological tool kit. In between workshops students cooperated in four assignments aimed at developing the entrepreneurial skills of the participants. This was done in the students’ local courses and shared over the internet on a Twinspace site. The assignments were researching the specifics of starting a business in the partner countries, analyzing the EU labor market, writing a business plan and making a SWOT analysis of social entrepreneurship. The project had the following objectives: 1. That students improve their entrepreneurial competences: collaboration skills, ethical and sustainable thinking, self-awareness, motivation, perseverance, financial and economic literacy, planning and management, as well as the ability to spot opportunities, value ideas, mobilize resources, mobilize others, take the initiative, cope with uncertainty and learn through experience. 2. That teachers practice and learn new methods of how to teach students improve these entrepreneurial competences, and apply these methods to other subjects. 3. That students gain good knowledge of the European labor market and what it is like to run a company in the partner countries. 4. That students come up with viable ideas that potentially can be developed into real businesses. 5. That students learn to always consider sustainability when brainstorming new ideas. The result of the project will continue to benefit both the partner schools and the students in the future. For the partner schools the methodological tool kit will continue to be used and taught in their respective schools. The participating students got to study close at hand how to write a business plan in another country and they practiced their entrepreneurial skills. They were also be able to get a broader European perspective on how to start a business, running a company and the labor market. The project focused on one of the eight key competences for life-long learning, entrepreneurship. It also touched upon three more: multilingual competence, digital competence, and personal, social and learning to learn competence. The workshops were centered on practicing entrepreneurship - how to act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into values for others. In order to do so the students needed to communicate actively with each other and use their multilingual competences. They also needed to work with others in a constructive way, remain resilient, cope with uncertainty and complexity, which is part of the personal, social and learning to learn competence. A fourth competence was also used, digital competence, as students practiced collaboration, creativity and used computers and different software to do so.