Unemployment, especially youth unemployment, is one of the biggest challenges contemporary Europe is facing in a constantly changing labor market: statistical data say that in Europe seventy million people do not have adequate basic and transversal skills. The 8 Key Competences, which Europe conceives as the basis for lifelong learning, define a set of knowledge, skills and attitudes that individuals need for personal development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment. Among these, the spirit of initiative and entrepreneurship (understood as an entrepreneurial mind-set) plays a fundamental role in the bester employability of young people and adults, but at the same time communication in foreign languages, digital competence, learning to learn, social competence, civic and mobility education, represents another fundamentals requirements in the scenario of the European labor market. Young students, particularly those at risk of marginalization in conditions of social or economic disadvantage, often perceive themselves without personal development power and suffer from a low level of self-esteem and self-efficacy in managing their training, life situations and work. These premises, common to all the organizations involved in the proposal, have created the need to learn and adopt innovative practices for entrepreneurship education, improving the training offer addressed to young people between 16-20 years old. The project proposes the exchange of good practices between teachers and trainers in the sense of creating new approaches to the training path that help improve students' skills and stimulate their motivation to learn. It is therefore intended to offer this target the opportunity to promote and enhance basic skills, personal, social and organizational skills. Best4Ent intends to implement an exchange of good practices between training bodies in order to implement a pilot course accompanied by a manual, so-called Handbook, addressed to educators and trainers who, at various levels, deal with professional training and youth education. The intent is to stimulate entrepreneurship and communication skills, the integration and active citizenship of young students, including those in disadvantaged conditions, by proposing a model that can be replicated and transferred to various realities. First of all, research carried out at local and transnational companies and employers will highlight the soft skills most sought after by the labor market. The final report that will follow will be the premise for the exchange of good practices and the course for teachers and trainers who will be the subject of the Handbook, OER of the project. A training event is planned for 20 teachers / trainers from the partner's 4 countries of origin. Subsequently, thanks to the skills acquired, pilot courses will be carried out at local level (for at least 50 young people between 16 and 29 years old). 20 of these young people will also have the opportunity to participate in a transnational mobility (short-therm exchange of group of pupils) which will seek to deepen the skills and knowledge acquired in the pilot courses. The project approach is cooperative and is based on non-formal training and techniques such as active and participated learning, learning by doing and peer-to-peer training. The exchange of good practices, the identification and involvement of the target groups, the Handbook containing the report of the soft skills sought by the World of Work and innovative ways of education for entrepreneurship will be the best results of Best4Ent. The impact of the project will also be visible thanks to statistical surveys of the sample of beneficiaries even after the end of the project. The Best4Ent project will continue to produce results beyond the end of the project. Its sustainability is intrinsic since it is a project that is intended to enhance the key competences and training standards regarding the training modules and teaching methodologies related to the teaching and learning processes in the VET sector. The project web portal will continue to exist at the end of the project and therefore access to all the products produced will continue to be guaranteed. Furthermore, all the subjects involved in the project partnership are training bodies with experience in supporting young people for the development of entrepreneurial skills and therefore each of them will insert the training module created among its own training and updating tools for teachers, trainers and educators.
With the aim of transferring the transversal skills identified as crucial towards the target group, and thus favoring the development of an entrepreneurial mindset among young VET students, the Best4Ent project considered it necessary to rethink the methodologies of vocational education and training, enhancing innovative educational approaches and stimulating and engaging learning methods in the educational context of interest. Specific objectives consisted in the sharing of relevant good practices among professionals in the context of a training mobility in Sweden, in the local testing of what was shared in that context, and finally in the concrete transfer, in the context of a further training mobility in Spain for young learners of previously tested methodologies and practices. A Hanbook sealed practices, tools and considerations deriving from the various design steps, with a view to transferability and replicability of the developed approach.
Analyzes by National Interministerial Agencies for Education and Employment, by the European Commission, as well as by Foundations and research bodies, reveal that over 40% of employers, in Italy and in Europe, declare that they have difficulty finding people with the skills your company needs in order to innovate and grow; in addition to technical-specialist skills (so-called hard skills), transversal skills (so-called soft skills) play a crucial role since they are transferable between sectors, do not become obsolete and are the basis of the individual's personal and professional development. The need for stakeholders (secondary and tertiary VET institutions, enterprises) to emphasize and focus on the development of innovative practices for entrepreneurship education, formal and non-formal, and to improve training offer aimed at young people < 30 (VET students, NEET, unemployed or in conditions of economic/social disadvantage).