Entrepreneurship and doing business is increasingly international these days. In the future many young people are bound to become entrepreneurs or employees of a multinational company. It is important that the students gain at least the basic knowledge of running a business and marketing their services in different countries within the EU. The professions our students will be involved in in the future do not exist yet and thus it vital to build skills that can prepare them to face the new challenges the future world of work will present them. Such skills are linked to the communicative skills, entrepreneurship, team work and distance work. In this project our aim is to connect these skills with the marketing tasks in order to give our students a chance to master and implement them in their future careers. In this way we hope to enhance their self-management skills. One of the main objectives of this project is also to increase the intercultural communication and understanding cultural perspectives of marketing a business. This will give the students tools to perform in various international working environments. Three schools will participate in this project and each will host an LTT involving teachers and students. In addition, Finland will arrange another LTT for teachers only at the beginning of the project in Helsinki. The participants for the project are the following: Porin Lyseon lukio, an upper secondary school on the west coast of Finland is specialized in business studies and digital learning solutions. BBS1 Göttingen - Arnoldi Schule, a vocational school in Lower Saxony, Germany is specialized in advanced business studies with the aim of gradually implementing digital learning platforms. Liceo Majorana-Laterza, an upper secondary school in Putignano, Puglia, Italy has extensive expertise in running international projects working with people from different cultures and languages. The LTT activities will all revolve around marketing and business life. In each LTT, we will visit at least three local businesses and each delegation will produce a marketing leaflet or another digital output about one of these businesses in each country. These leaflets will then be shared and compared from a cultural point of view in workshop sessions to gain a deeper understanding of cultural differences - if there are any. The products will be in digital form and they will be shared with the business in question for their marketing purposes. In addition, the leaflets and the comparisons will be published on the project’s eTwinning and FB sites. Since all partners represent different regions of Europe - Pori as a Scandinavian country represents northern Europe, Göttingen Central Europe and Putignano in southern Italy represents southern Europe - we expect to find some substantial differences in each team’s approach to the marketing tasks and to make some reasonable comparisons between them. To enable the students to carry out the marketing activities, the students will also work on the modules on marketing provided by TAT (Talous ja nuoret) and eventually finish the business course on the digital platform. They will also consult the expertise of some of the teachers and students of Satakunta University of Applied Sciences (SAMK), LUM University in Apulia and PFH University of Applied Sciences in Göttingen. With these activities we will give our students more skills in not only in the business world but also in digital learning and team working skills. The local teams will have a meeting during each LTT and virtual meetings between the LTTs where they will discuss and plan the future events and evaluate the progress in working on the TAT materials. They will also conduct five surveys: one to gain an understanding of the pre-existing knowledge about marketing and three others after each LTT to measure the impacts of the LTT activities. The final and fifth survey will measure the overall impacts of the project as a whole. EU aims to enhance intercultural collaboration and to create new strategies to enhance global entrepreneurship of young people. Our project is in line with these objectives. We want to give the students in this project opportunities to expand their awareness of cultural interpretations in various marketing environments.
In this project we wanted to give our students skills for their future: communications skills, cooperation skills and skills for team and distance work. It is said that social skills will be one of the most important skills in the future world of work. In this project we combined it with internationality and business studies (entrepreneurship). We completed 3 LTTs with students as planned. Before them we planned to have a teachers‘ meeting in Helsinki, because our main partner was TAT (Talous ja nuoret). We were supposed to visit TAT, be introduced to the TAT business courses, create our own TAT course to our students and get to know each other better. Unfortunately, COVID19 forced us to postpone the teachers‘ meeting and to settle for several distance meetings on Zoom. Due to prolonged pandemic, we had to apply for an extension for our project, as we realized that we would have run out of time for three LTTs without it. Our contact person from TAT organized a remote meeting for us, where he taught us how to use the platform and gave us practical advice. We also opened a project page on eTwinning and uploaded material there, including e.g. student profiles, photos, and introductions. Our setbacks weren't limited to COVID; during our project, eTwinning underwent changes, and our entire project page disappeared, and we couldn't access it anymore. Eventually, we found our page again, but we had already started building a different site, which now was made redundant. Additionally, TAT changed its business courses on Moodle. Unfortunately, the English materials for our course were not tranferred and we had to painstakingly do it on our own. Furthermore, the merging of two upper secondary schools in Pori inflicted a lot of additional administrative work when registering the new upper secodary school in the EU databases. The teachers kept in touch through emails and messages between virtual meetings. Before the first LTT in Pori, participating students got to know each other remotely on Zoom, where they introduced themselves and chatted in small groups. The preliminary survey about business and marketing was held remotely. Finally, in the spring of 2022, we managed to carry out the first mobility with students in Pori, Finland (C1). We implemented our project according to our plans: we completed TAT tasks, went on company visits, and visited the university of applied sciences (SAMK) where we attended a lecture on marketing and creating advertising leaflets. The main project task for the students was done on a farm, where they produced Instagram marketing posts and created a promotional leaflet. We also explored Pori and Satakunta, and learned about Finnish culture. Before the second mobility in Göttingen, students were tasked with conducting a comparative study of the Lidl company. In Germany, we implemented our project plan fully as planned. The aim was to delve into marketing, specifically into branding and logistics. During classroom work, the participating countries successfully compared Lidl's product ranges, prices, and store floorplans between Germany, Italy, and Finland. As an example of branding, students created either logos for their cities or tiktok clips about the sights in Göttingen. Unfortunately, the C2 in Göttingen was significantly impacted by COVID19, and some locally organized activities had to be canceled or held remotely due to the pandemic situation at that time. We visited the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute's space technology laboratories and departments. We also also explored German history and culture by visiting a medieval fortress in Eichsfeld and a museum on the former border and the medieval town of Duderstad. BBS1 Arnoldi Schule is specialized in business studies, which gave us a lot of valuable insights into teaching business. The last LTT was held in Putigano, Italy. The topic was environmental awareness and sustainable economy. We learned, among other things, how to calculate our carbon footprint. Once again, we implemented the original plans of our project, completed tasks, and visited companies, including a cosmetics company and a luxury hotel (masseria), as well as a farm that produced mozzarella. A professor from the University of Foggia gave us a lecture on carbon footprint as a prelude to our visit to the farm. Our visit coincided with the local carnivals, and we had the opportunity to witness a spectacular carnival parade, its festivities and explore Italian culture. We contemplated on to having the teachers‘ meeting in Helsinki after the C3. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a suitable date for all and once more settled for a distance meeting on Zoom. The last survey was held after C3 and we asked about the benefits and feedback of the project. EU aims to enhance intercultural collaboration and to create new strategies to enhance global entrepreneurship of young people. Our project was in line with these objectives and we are really pleased with it.