Sustainable, future proof entrepreneurship is based on ethics and values. This is the motto of project Value and Future, an innovative project that connects 6 partners in Europe with a common goal: to empower young people towards ethical entrepreneurship and leadership, inspired by role models. The project sets the ambition to develop the skills and mind-set of young people, based on values and empathy instead of on only profit or professional protocols. The project encourages students of VET to actively seek the purpose for their own entrepreneurial future and to recognise the ethical choices that enterprises showcase around them. Through a set of activities and lessons supported by teachers and entrepreneurs, VET students engage in a dialogue about moral dilemma’s in enterprises in relation to people and planet. They learn to ask critical questions and they search for positive role models. Due to project activities, students engage in conversations with enterprises to define values, ethics and authenticity, and the difference businesses can make in society. In these conversations, students continuously ask themselves the question: ‘what matters to me as a future entrepreneur and what matters to entrepreneurs I meet? What matters to my future company and what matters to enterprises around me? The project connects the need of powerful entrepreneurship education that changes the mind-set of young people and teachers about the ethical and moral angles of their choices, carreer path and place in society. There is a growing attention for business ethics in the world; at the same time, the education of ethical entrepreneurship within VET is a not discovered area in Europe. Project partners develop a new educational method that combines entrepreneurial, sustainable and value-driven learning. This educational method consists of a series of lessons, future days with entrepreneurs, conversations through conducting a quick scan, and an online inspirational environment of storytelling. The learning process challenges young people to visit companies in their region, to get into dialogue with entrepreneurs and to seek moral dilemmas and answers to them. Their learning process is supported by role models they seek, find and appoint: entrepreneurs with a vision on ethical entrepreneurial mind-set who challenge young people to develop their own vision on ethics and values. The project is innovative due to a development in mind-set as educational method, towards the deeper values of individuals in relation to ethical leadership, where choices are made based on courage, truth, purpose and a sense of legacy. “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” Plato
Objective of the project was to empower young people towards ethical entrepreneurship and leadership, inspired by role models. Partner wanted to develop the ethical entrepreneurial mind-set of young people and teachers, based on real-life business cases, company scans and events of connection. The project wanted to equip young people – the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders – with competences for a value-based ethical entrepreneurial action. This change of mind-set was taking place through lessons, exchange and events on a local, regional and EU level. Specific objectives of the project were: - The development and implementation of a new educational curriculum for ethical entrepreneurship for VET’s - The development of new connections between VET schools and businesses in partner countries. Encourage students and teachers to explore fair, value-driver businesses in the direct contact with entrepreneurs. Value and Future sets the goal to explore a new, innovative way of thinking, leading to ethical, value-based businesses. The project wanted to focuses on the driving force of people and companies, on the values they cherish, anf on business choices that are based on courage, truth, purpose and a sense of legacy.
Consortium partners applied for Value and Future project to give ethical entrepreneurial learning and mind-set a boost in VET in their region, country and in Europe. Partners had the ambition to create innovative tools and activities that challenge entrepreneurial education, school-corporate collaboration - and especially challenge students. In this context, the project wanted to promote the uptake of a more fair, ethical entrepreneurial thinking as a way to reaching the global and European sustainable development goals. Activities were designed to equip young people for an economic and financial independence, connected to a fair, value-driven and ethical environment. This ambition and project design suited well the needs that partners wanted to address: to stimute young people as agents of change, in developing new thinking and business models for a more fair, transparent, ethical economy, placing people and planet alongside profit. Partners wanted to contribute to the creation of new educational methods where students learn to seek purpose and value at the root of entreprises, inspired by role models. This is in line with the need to promote the culture of responsible, value-based entrepreneurship.