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Digital Generation: Promoting digital entrepreneurship among young people

2019-3-UK01-KA105-0775302019Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: UK|RU|PT|BY · Grant: €50,690
Entrepreneurial learning - entrepreneurship educationICT - new technologies - digital competencesSocial entrepreneurship / social innovation

Objectives

In the recent years, the world has been witnessing the rise of a brand-new category of entrepreneurship – Digital Entrepreneurship. Digital Entrepreneurship can be defined as embracing “new ventures and the transformation of existing business by creating and using novel digital technologies.” Being a relevant socio-economic and technological phenomenon, it can be considered as the joining of traditional entrepreneurship with an emphasis on leveraging new digital technologies in novel ways, such as social, mobile, analytics, cloud and cyber-solutions, all in order to shift the traditional way of creating and doing business in the digital era and for the new digital generation of people. Consequently, we are witnessing a peak of acceleration of digital entrepreneurial activity related with the creation and development of “digital start-ups”, and more recently with their growth to scaling-up phases. As a follow up to a successful 2018 project “Make IT Real”, which touched upon the theme of youth digitalisation, some of its participants teamed up to offer a new follow-up project, where young people could promote new ways of youth entrepreneurship by making the most of digital technologies and using peer-to-peer approach. A peer-to-peer approach in dealing with this issue is a strong way to ensure active participation of young people at a community, regional, national and international level. However, the big data that is going hand in hand with digital entrepreneurship is a hard nut to crack. Even for the youth, being on the forefront of the digital world. Nonetheless, young people do possess country- or region-specific knowledge that can prove to be useful for their peers elsewhere. Besides this, young people are much preoccupied with protection of their privacy and personal data on the web. With various companies trying to track your behaviour across websites to serve you highly relevant advertisements, or cybercriminals leaving no stone unturned to steal your private information for their malicious purposes, this topic is a growing concern for young people, especially those who plan to build their careers in the Internet. This is why the aim of this project was to network, exchange and develop best practices in the field of digital youth entrepreneurship and personal information protection, with an emphasis on the peer learning concept. The objectives of our project were: - to enhance the use of digital technology to increase entrepreneurship skills among young people; - to establish the basis for young people’s networking in the sphere of digital entrepreneurship where they can share examples of good practice, experiences from different countries as well as cooperate for a common result; - to empower young people to make use of the established links to master the big data related to digital entrepreneurship; - to get to know the existing contemporary technologies and regulations on personal data protection; - to familiarise the participants with the ways to promote and multiply digital entrepreneurship initiatives among their peers; - to identify, present and multiply good practice examples (actions on policies and youth participation projects which enhance entrepreneurship initiatives among young people); - to help young people understand how they can contribute to their own well-being and well-being of their peers. Issues and needs: - Youth unemployment and inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities: the project engaged with young people who face economic barriers. - To enhance the international dimension of education and training, in particular through cooperation between Programme and Partner Country institutions in the field of VET and in higher education, by increasing the attractiveness of European higher education institutions and supporting the EU's external action, including its development objectives, through the promotion of mobility and cooperation between Programme and Partner Country higher education institutions and targeted capacity building in Partner Countries. - To ensure maximum participation of young people: this was the young people’s idea and they were involved at every level from the preparation, implementation and evaluation phases of the project. Their participation was needed to increase motivation and "buy-in" for the project and contributed to its sustainability. - Creative and entrepreneurial methods were developed and encouraged in order to address unemployment and the education versus skills gap that often exists.

Project partners (4)