Entrepreneurship in lifelong learning for young people and teachers/trainers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Entrepreneurship in lifelong learning for young people and teachers/trainers

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

The economic crisis in Europe has caused that one of the priorities of the EU Member States is to work in order to face the consequences from the high levels of unemployment. These data are very negative in the case of population who are 30 years or under this age. The rates of youth unemployment are generally much higher than the unemployment rates of all ages. The group who is under 25 years old is one of the most affected by the crisis, if compared to other age groups. According to Eurostat (2013), the highest rates of unemployment among young people under 25 years old in the UE belong to Greece (58,6%), Spain (55,7%), Croatia (49,9%), Italy (40%), Cyprus (38,7%) and Portugal (37,7%).

The fact of being unemployed at an early age has a negative impact; but unemployment does not only affect low-skilled youngsters, but also those young people with higher education levels and with many difficulties get a work position according to their qualification level.

The EU promotes entrepreneurship as a key factor for competitiveness and highlights the importance of promoting the European culture of entrepreneurship by stimulating the right mindset and skills related to it. In the Recommendation from the European Parliament and the Counsel in 2006 about key competences for lifelong learning, entrepreneurship was included among the eight key competences.
Improving creativity and innovation -including entrepreneurship- at all levels of education and training are long-term objectives from Education and Training 2020, in the strategic framework of the European cooperation.

According to “Entrepreneurship Education at School in Europe 2012”, 8 countries have launched specific strategies to promote education for entrepreneurship, whereas other 13 include it as part of their national lifelong learning strategies, youth and growth.

Regarding concrete training programs on entrepreneurship for teachers/trainers, only in three countries of the EU it is possible to find them, but these are only feared towards teachers of the formal education system. The main barrier is the lack of concepts related to enterprising skills included in the teachers’/trainers’ curricula, key element to train and transmit the entrepreneurial values and attitudes to the younger population.

Two concrete objectives:

*Increasing the skills on the entrepreneurship of VET trainers/teachers.
*Improving the skills on entrepreneurship of unemployed young people between 16-25 years old.

Several activities are going to be developed to get the proposed objectives:

*Analysis of good training practices on entrepreneurship of young people at local, regional, and national level.
*Analysis of the training lacks on entrepreneurship by the young population.
*Design and elaboration of on-line pedagogical contents to promote corporate spirit and culture.
*Development of methodological guidelines to support teaching.
*Implementation of the training contents through an on-line pilot experiences with teachers/trainers and young people.

7 partners from 7 EU countries will participate in the project. 6 partners will play technical functions (CIAPE in Italy, IFH in Portugal, POU-Obris in Croatia, Synthesis Center in Cyprus, CVT. G. Anaptixis in Greece, and IFES in Spain), and one technological partner who develops the different tools related to ICT (G4E from Latvia). IFES will be the promoter and coordinator.

EnYouthTeacher duration will be two years, from 1st of September, 2014 until 31st of August, 2016, and it is part of KA2 call from Erasmus+ program of the European Union.

The Intellectual Outputs will be 4: Competence profile of VET teachers/trainers, Guide of Best practices on training for youth entrepreneurship, Training material for VET teachers/trainers to encourage entrepreneurship, and Training material for unemployed young people in entrepreneurship. 26 activities have been programmed to achieve these outputs, including interviews, groups of experts, desk research, elaboration of training material, pilot experiences, etc. Besides, there will be activities for dissemination (seminars and workshops), evaluation of the quality, validation, and four transnational meetings.

The target groups will be VET teachers/trainers and unemployed young people. Other beneficiary groups will be Public administrations, social partners, organizations in charge to promote the entrepreneurship and self-employment, RRHH managers, training experts, etc.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 243494,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITUTO DE FORMACION Y ESTUDIOS SOCIALES (IFES) & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Pucko otvoreno uciliste Obris
• G4E Software Solutions
• SYNTHESIS CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION LTD
• GEORGIKO TECHNOLOGIKO KENTRO EREVNAS EPANGELMATIKIS KATARTISIS KAI EPIMORFOSIS
• IFH – Instituto de Formação para o Desenvolvimento Humano, Lda
• CIAPE – CENTRO ITALIANO PER L’APPRENDIMENTO PERMANENTE