Entrepreneurial knowledgebase Erasmus Project

Project Title

Entrepreneurial knowledgebase

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Capacity Building for youth in neighbouring and enlargement countries

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

“Entrepreneurial knowledgebase” is a project that has involved youth leaders/workers and young people from 9 European and Western Balkan countries (UK, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia) in 2 mobility activities: training course and youth exchange from March 2016 to February 2017 in Serbia. The mobility of youth workers (training) provided the opportunity for youth leaders/workers to meet in person and exchange knowledge, skills and experience about best practices regarding entrepreneurial education in non-formal context. The youth exchange provided the opportunity for young people, of whom many had the chance to participate in such an activity for the first time, to meet their peers, learn and share what entrepreneurship for them means, as well as to try themselves in different skills (e.g. bread making, upcycling, creating a list of local recipes for starting a cook blog, giving sports lessons etc) that they could use as a basis of their entrepreneurial idea. The idea was to encourage them to think of entrepreneurship as a viable self-employment option and that it is not only IT start-ups as the most popular entrepreneurship-connected term today. However, it was all in line with strengthening some of the basic entrepreneurship competences: team-building, facilitation, communication, intercultural competence and creative thinking skills.
The mobility activities were complemented by the capacity building Info session happening in each partner country during the Global Entrepreneurship Week 14-20 November2016 to draw attention to the still dire situation in youth employment prospects and celebrate entrepreneurship as a viable option to address youth unemployment. We organised discussion with entrepreneurs, talked about what young people most fear about starting their own business and spread motivation to think about entrepreneurship. We also discussed about the EU opportunities that stand at young people’s disposal that aim at lessening the youth unemployment. In this context, special attention was given to the programme Erasmus for young Entrepreneurs.
Since the online presence is very important, an online platform (www.entres.net) has been developed to facilitate dissemination of project results, at the same time offering itself as a platform for partner meetings and discussions on entrepreneurship at European level. The organisations and individuals have an opportunity to register their project there, advertise it to the interested stakeholders, update results and also keep records on the projects. This should result in their improved capacity of organisations to operate daily. Since the registration is very simple, as well as the whole process this will be specially beneficial to small organisations that don’t have highly developed IT skills.
The methodology used during the mobility activities was non-formal learning methods. The activities were divided into 3 main groups: getting to know and teambuilding activities, whose aim was to foster positive and working group dynamics, thematic activities, whose aims was to introduce the participants to the main topic (entrepreneurship) and outdoor activities that developed the specially the connection and understanding of the local community. Participants were encouraged to take an active role in and also responsibility for their own learning processes, to experiment, exchange and collaborate.
Dissemination was conducted through posting on websites, sending newsletters to our partner organisations, press releases, social media and Info Session which generated the most feedback. The project results are made available online.
On the individual level, the project resulted in the improved personal and professional competences of the participants. On the organisational level, the project resulted in new partnerships, new youth entrepreneurial projects, raised awareness of the importance of entrepreneurship in society

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 41069 Eur

Project Coordinator

CENTAR ZA EDUKACIJU I UNAPREDJENJE DRUSTVA & Country: RS

Project Partners