Arctic wind and Southern sun – Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education in Finland and Portugal Erasmus Project

Project Title

Arctic wind and Southern sun – Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education in Finland and Portugal

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The project Arctic Wind and Southern Sun – Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education in Finland and Portugal was a bilateral European school project between two general secondary high schools situated in rural areas of Finland and Portugal: Kauhajoki secondary high school in Kauhajoki, Finland and AEVID in Vidigueira, Portugal. The main objective of the project was to promote teaching and learning ecologically sustainable entrepreneurship in the general secondary level schools and exploring the working possibilities for foreign EU citizens in both the countries. The other objectives of the project were to promote the students’ job seeking skills, to promote the students’ basic language and ICT skills and to promote intercultural understanding and understanding of sustainable development.

4 teachers and 20 students from both the schools participated in the project directly. The teachers were specialized in science and languages and they have strong experience in working and managing projects. The students were secondary level between the ages of 14 and 18.

The project activities included two 10-day exchanges of a group of 20 pupils and 4 teachers to the both participating schools and active online working using e-mail, Skype video calls, Google Drive Documents, Facebook and WhatsApp during the whole project.

The first 10-day Learning and teaching activity took place from the 20th to the 29th April 2016 in Portugal. During the ten days the Finnish students lived in their host families, worked together on the manual “10 steps to be an entrepreneur”, built solar ovens, visited and learned about solar and hydroelectric power plants and learned a lot about the Portuguese culture both in the families and visiting the historical destinations of Lisbon and Evora. They also learned about the working possibilities in Portugal during a visit to the Finnish embassy in Lisbon, Portugal.

The second 10-day learning and teaching activity took place from the 14th to the 25th February 2017 in Finland. The Portuguese students lived in their host families, worked together on the themes of entrepreneurship, wind and solar power and sustainable nature tourism. They took part in a workshop on entrepreneurship in Helsinki Think Company, visited two big wind farms, several companies with the entrepreneurs telling their stories and sustainable nature tourism destinations. They learned a lot about Finnish culture and nature in the winter during the activities and visits. They also learned about the working possibilities in Finland during a visit to the Portuguese embassy in Helsinki, Finland.

ICT-based methods were widely used in carrying out the project and while co-operating over a long distance. Using these web-based communicating and working methods like Google drive, Skype, WhatsApp and Facebook, the need of physical travelling was minimized. The other important method was to explore places like wind and solar power plants and companies outside the school and to interact face-to-face during the two 10-day Learning and teaching activities.

The activities between the two exchanges included Skype video calls between the coordinators during the whole project and also between the students before the first meeting, preparing presentations about wind and solar power by the students, making a trip to a wind power plant construction site in Finland, making an educational demonstration video about measuring the power of solar radiation, making the solar power measurements in both countries and sending Christmas greetings and other messages between the students.

The results of the project include an innovative Model of teaching sustainable entrepreneurship, a Manual “10 steps to be an entrepreneur”, a small Finnish-Portuguese Dictionary and some e-teaching material about solar power including a demonstration video. All of these results are permanently published on the project’s open web site. The impact of the project on the participating students was that they gained skills of entrepreneurship, job seeking, travelling, cultural understanding and language as a result of the project. The impact on the participating teachers was that they learned about teaching sustainable entrepreneurship and the culture of the partner country. The participating families learned about the language and culture of the partner country.

The project had positive economic long term impacts in the personal, local, regional and even larger levels because it promoted entrepreneurship, job seeking and language skills. It also promoted labor mobility within the EU by giving the students better skills needed to work in a foreign country like travelling, living in a foreign culture and speaking a foreign language. These effects on the students were also verified by a questionnaire at the end of the project. The results of the questionnaire are published on the project web site.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65280 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kauhajoen lukio, Kauhajoen kaupunki & Country: FI

Project Partners

• AEVID