Research centres as well as counselling and work support institutions agree that there exist some common needs at European level related to entrepreneurship learning opportunities that are not sufficiently addressed. First the lack of a learning approach that is flexible enough to fit to all the different entrepreneurial casuistic existing and at the same time, exhaustive or comprehensive enough to cover all entrepreneurial competencies in an efficient way. Secondly, there is a lack of European standard tools for the diagnosis / recognition and validation of knowledge, skills and competences of potential entrepreneurs. In that sense F3E intends to promote, by means of the active co-operation between 4 educational and entrepreneurship support institutions, the promotion of a new European innovative approach towards adult education entrepreneurship promotion (diagnosis, objectives, trainingmaterials and evaluation) that will help to secure accurate entrepreneurship support for people leading towards their employment and job creation. The main aim of the project is to design and profuselly test a joint methodology within AE providers which will allow, on the one hand, the diagnosis and assessment of the entrepreneurship capabilities of individuals and, on the other hand, to share and develop a comprehensive series of actions (training modules) that respond to the needs identified and, thus, contribute to foster the provision of key competences to entrepreneurs and to improve the links between education and training and the success within the world of work. The working methodology will benefit all involved parts since will become a mechanism for knowledge and research carried out within educational institutions to enhance the quality and relevance of the learning offer with their own staff and trainees and, on the other hand, trainees will have at their disposal a Entrepreneurial Kit for the improvement of their entrepreneurial capabilities. For these objectives to be achieved, the following activities will be carried out: - Development of a (auto)diagnosis tool for the analysis of the entrepreneurship capabilities of trainees An online platform will be produced to facilitate interaction, improve ICT skills and disseminate and attract potential entrepreneurs to this first step of diagnosis. - Test the diagnosis tool. Each partner institution will select a sample of 10 members of staff or trainees that will be the target for the testing. - Individual identification of main shortcomings and weaknesses that need to be addressed. - Share and design a whole set of methodologies and training contents to map all the diagnosis areas. It will be composed of a core curriculum that will contain training objectives, contents and methods. - Test of a personalized learning path made up of different modular training contents to address the particular shortcomings identified by the diagnosis tool. - Release of the Entrepreneurial KIT encompassing the diagnosis tool and the modular training programme as an Open Educational Resource (OER) on the online workspace for everyone to access it.
The main aim of the project was to design a joint methodology within AE providers which would allow, on the one hand, the diagnosis and assessment of the entrepreneurship capabilities of individuals and, on the other hand, to share and develop a comprehensive series of actions that would respond to the needs identified previously and, thus, contribute to foster the provision of key competences to entrepreneurs and to improve the links between education and training and the success within the world of work. We can proudly say that it has benefited all involved parts since it has become a mechanism for knowledge and research within educational institutions to enhance the quality and relevance of our learning offer, both for our own staff and for our trainees and, on the other hand, entrepreneurs have had at their disposal a wide range of tools for the improvement of their entrepreneurial capabilities. This way, project has produced a European wide standard for providing case studies and outcomes of toolbox tested with real entrepreneurs from different countries and have given the partner Institutions a unique opportunity to explore start-up processes in other partner countries and to create a comprehensive solution dedicated to AE.
We shared a series of common concerns such as the current market conditions, with a very high unemployment rate in the countries represented and the fact that many individuals were seeing entrepreneurship and setting up new businesses as the opportunity to get into the work world again. We were devoted to train individuals to define and set up their businesses, we carried out a common need analysis that resulted in the following shortcomings / needs that we agreed F3E could address: The lack of a learning approach that is flexible enough to fit to all the different entrepreneurial casuistic existing and at the same time¨ exhaustive or comprehensive enough to cover all entrepreneurial phases in an efficient way. The lack of tools for the wide recognition and validation of knowledge, skills and competences of the individuals not only at EU level but even at National level in each of the represented countries. We agreed to apply for F3E to promote, by means of active co-operation between research institutions and counselling / work support institutions, the introduction of a new and innovative approach towards entrepreneurship training in all the spheres of action to help individuals to jump into the work world.