Education for Entrepreneurship can be seen as one of the contemporary themes of current school and out-of-school education and has also become one of the priority topics of the European Union’s education policy. According to the definition of the European Union, entrepreneurship is the ability of an individual to translate ideas into practice, which includes creativity, innovation, sense of initiative and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects with the aim of achieving certain results (The Council of the European Union). These crucial skills are teachable and must be integrated into educational subjects at all levels. We consider that this topic is of major importance in schools’ education and the teachers must develop the students entrepreneurial skills in order to become successful in their future careers. The Project ‘21st Century Entrepreneurs’s main aim is to develop the students’ key competences within the frame of entrepreneurship. These key competencies are creativity, innovation and risk taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects. ability to identify available opportunities for personal, professional and/or business activities, and a broad understanding of the workings of the economy, The activities that will lead to the achievement of these aims are job shadowing days, creative workshops, creation of sales sites, case studies of successful entrepreneurs, market days, business plans, traditional arts and crafts, bake sales, marketing strategies, pricing activities, branding, and advertisement activities. Entrepreneurship education is a creative process rather than a mechanical one. Therefore, teaching would be challenging and problematic and requires new and active teaching methods. The methodologies we used are the most effective, and include group project, case study, individual projects, writing business plans, practical experience in producing and selling products and services, learning from mistakes, development of a new venture creation project, and problem-solving, group discussion, official speech, interviewing entrepreneurs, simulations, and company visits. In long term, the project aims to make students ready and equipped for the future labor market and contribute to the development of the economy. Moreover, this education, which takes children one step ahead of others in terms of creating opportunities, also helps to raise individuals who are sensitive to social equality, but also to help students lay the foundations of a strong self-confidence that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. The project is carried out by six partners from Portugal, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and Spain. Some of the partners are big groups of schools from urban areas (The Bulgarian school, Portuguese, Turkish, Lithuanian and Polish) and rural schools like the Spanish one. No matter what the profile of the schools is, the students are facing the same problems (lack of jobs due to the high unemployment rate, or the difficulty of finding a suitable job they can do) so to help them, we believe that entrepreneurial education should be a requirement in these schools. All the partners have a certain degree of experience in this field, but we felt that this theme was treated superficially, and, through the exchanged carried on in this project we aimed to reach the depths of this topic and learn new and innovative practices from each other. All the schools are planning to continue the entrepreneurial education by introducing this topic in the curriculum and by opening an extra-curricular Entrepreneurial school club dedicated to charitable actions. The project involves a total number of 700 students (100 students with fewer opportunities), aged between 10 to 14 years old, and a number of 60 teachers. In addition to this number, many other teachers, school principals, psychologists, councilors, and institutions (such as NGOs, companies, city halls, higher education institutions) will work on the implementation of the activities. Parents are also directly involved in this project as they will participate in workshops or open days events organized in each school. The project is based on six short-term exchanges of groups of pupils that include all of the most important elements of entrepreneurial education: basic principles of economy and European regulations of opening a business, marketing strategies, mix marketing, financial literacy and entrepreneurial key competences. The Erasmus partners also worked an eTwinning project together, called ‘Be an Entrepreneur: Start today not (216086). eTwinning project was the space where the partners first introduced their schools and themselves and got to work with each other as a team. The project was used to create student's background for our project. The eTwinning platform is also used for the dissemination of the project's results and for the project management meetings.
In 2009, the World Economic Forum (WEF) stated that “Innovation and entrepreneurship provide a way forward for solving the global challenges of the 12st century, building sustainable development, creating jobs, generating renewed economic growth and advancing human welfare”. Education for Entrepreneurship can be seen as one of the contemporary themes of current school and out-of-schooleducation and has also become one of the priority topics of the European Union’s education policy. We consider that this topic is of major importance in schools’ education and the teachers must develop the students entrepreneurial skills in order to become successful in their future careers. The Project ‘21st Century Entrepreneurs’s main aim has been to develop the students’ key competences within the frame of entrepreneurship. These key competencies are creativity, innovation and risk taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects. ability to identify available opportunities for personal, professional and/or business activities, and a broad understanding of the workings of the economy. The activities that lead to the achievement of these aims have been job shadowing days, creative workshops, creation of sales sites, case studies of successful entrepreneurs, market days, business plans, traditional arts and crafts, bake sales, marketing strategies, pricing activities, branding, and advertisement activities. In long term, the project aims to make students ready and equipped for the future labor market and contribute to the development of the economy. Moreover, this education, which takes children one step ahead of others in terms of creating opportunities, also helps to raise individuals who are sensitive to social equality, but also to help students lay the foundations of a strong self-confidence that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. The project is carried out by six partners from Portugal, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and Spain. Some of thepartners are big groups of schools from urban areas (The Bulgarian school, Portuguese, Turkish, Lithuanian and Polish) and rural schools like the Spanish one. No matter what the profile of the schools is, the students are facing the same problems (lack of jobs due to the high unemployment rate, or the difficulty of finding a suitable job they can do) so to help them. All the partners had a certain degree of experience in this field, but we felt that this theme was treated superficially, and, through the exchanged carried on in this project we aimed to reach the depths of this topic and have learnt new and innovative practices from each other. The project has involved a total number of 700 students (100 students with fewer opportunities), aged between 11 to 16 years old, and a number of 60 teachers. In addition to this number, many other teachers, school principals, psychologists, councilors, and institutions have participated working on the implementation of the activities. Parents are also directly involved in this project as they participated in workshops or open days events organized in each school. The project has been based on six short-term exchanges of groups of pupils that include all of the most important elements of entrepreneurial education: basic principles of economy and European regulations of opening a business, marketing strategies, mix marketing, financial literacy and entrepreneurial key competences. By creating an interdisciplinary and collaborative environment it has helped to develop entrepreneurship awareness from an early age by acquiring many life skills to individuals. For this purpose, we have developed this project. Through the recognition of occupations and businesses around them, students hsve been able to recognize well-known and successful entrepreneurs in and out of their communities, to discover the roles people play in the economy, as employees and as consumers, to understand the important role of education in their future, to acquire the basic concepts of economy, to understand the challenges facing entrepreneurship and to come up with innovative ideas and product design. With hands-on, real life experiences, collaborative project work, it has also been the aim of the project to make entrepreneurship education a recognized and basic feature of education systems globally. Through the sharing of ideas, experience, knowledge and practices from different countries across Europe, students, teachers and schools have been able to Benefit tremendously.