AGILE4CIRC project comes as an answer to the complicated situation of the low-skilled or low-qualified adults around Europe. They are facing labour market that has gone under significant changes and discrepancy between the educational offers and market demands, with low levels of qualification and limited ability to create new jobs. Most affected are the people in the range of 30-60, that lost their job and could not find a new one due to the change of the skills required by the market. AGILE4CIRC is addressing those issues with focus on Circular Economy. AGILE4CIRC objectives are aligned with EU policies in the field of employment fostering sustainable development of the economy, increasing the level of employment, equal opportunities for all, a high degree of economic competitiveness, increased quality of life and economic and social cohesion. AGILE4CIRC objectives are: • To design of innovative methodological framework for development of business ideas using Agile • To do a research on Circular Economy and Social Responsibility in each country dedicated to adults and new business opportunities to be developed for the targeted group in the new economy. • To designing a training course and toolkit applied to Circular Economy and Social Responsibility. • To develop Incubating Service Management System for business agility in the Circular Economy and to Incubate 12 business ideas • To start MOOC platform with all the training Materials, necessary reports and funding support material AGILE4CIRC activities include: • Development of innovative methodological framework basing on Agile, • Development of training course that will motivate adults to re-enter the employment market or start new businesses in circular economy. • MOOC will be started as a supporting tool for successfully developing and incubating business ideas, • Motivational and confidence building activities for adults to stimulate them to continue working career or starting a new one, • Virtual incubating of new business ideas generated by adults during the project • Dissemination events, including seminars with relevant stakeholders, workshops and a closure conference • Other activities related to Quality Assurance, Evaluation, Exploitation and Sustainability of AGILE4CIRC outcomes Project partners include: 1 HEI, 1 foundation, 1 business incubator, 2 NGOs and 1 SME. Cooperation has been already established to develop the project proposal and the tasks and activities have been distributed according to each partner’s expertise. This is all done on the previos experience between the partners from other projects. Different methodologies (Agile, Liberating Structures, LSP, Toyota Kata) will be used for development of the Training Course. Addition is the knowledge that partners are bringing in relation to entrepreneurial mind state and skills, social innovation, circular economy, business development and others. Project results include: - Design of innovative methodology to develop a business idea using Agile, for low-skilled or low-qualified adults. - Designing the Training Course and toolkit applied to Circular Economy and Social Responsibility. - Design of Incubating Service Management System App - 125 Adults trained across the partnership - 25 selected participants for LTTA - 12 Business ideas supported in the circular economy - 3 national seminars organised with relevant stakeholders - 20-25 target adults integrated in each seminar (65 total) - Closure conference/Seed funding seminar organised with 70 participants (15 internationals and 55 locals) - 1 MOOC developed - Website, logo, poster, flyer. Also, relevant stakeholders such as Business Associations, Business Incubators, policy-makers, etc. will be invited to participate in various project activities. The project is designed to have a long-term benefit to the low-skilled or low-qualified adults around Europe. Partner organizations will seek to use all new tools created during the project, to carry out actions aimed at a wide audience, beyond the defined target numbers in this project. Associated partners will help to embrace results after the project ends. Website and MOOC will ensure that anyone interested in this topic can get the information and use the outputs we created. Conferences, training, publishing papers in journals where project results can be presented will enhance longer project benefits.
The overall aim of the project was to offer specific solutions to facilitate access to learning, training and employment for those lesser-qualified. In other words, to provide skills to people being away from employment for long periods and find it difficult to re-enter the labor market. Project partners saw this being fulfilled by producing tangible results (innovative technologies) based on the intellectual outputs described in the proposal, and even went a step further by being able to continue working on this project when the pandemic was out confirming the true principles of Agile management. In addition, the partnership aimed at: - To test and validate the prototype of the innovative AGILE4CIRC training course and train adults - To incubate 12 business ideas in the partner countries - To explore new funding opportunities for the incubated ideas - To offer a Massive Open On-line Course (MOOC) with all training materials, report and funding support material in one repository - To engage relevant actors in supporting low-skilled or low-qualified adults - To raise awareness on Circular Economy and Social Responsibility.
The project partnership comprised 6 organizations from 5 countries, with a different level of involvement in Circular Economy and Social Responsibility, nevertheless all with a mission to assist unemployed and job-seeking adults to identify and strengthen own competences. The problem to be tackled was the mismatch between educational offer and market demands fortified by low levels of qualifications and shortage in new jobs. The partnership came to apply for this project in order to support the low-skilled or the low-qualified adults in entering the labor market and regaining self-confidence, by offering them effective and effective materials and tools so that they can set up their own business on the principles of the circular economy. In this context, the AGILE4CIRCLE project produced national reports on adult and new business opportunities in Circular Economy and Social Responsibility through which a new Agile framework was designed to train and implement new project ideas (IO1). In addition, a training program and toolkit based on different methodologies was delivered to train adults in generating business ideas (IO2) which were later incubated through a Service management System application (IO3).