European Equine Entrepreneur 2016 – 2018 Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Equine Entrepreneur 2016 – 2018

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project successfully completed and delivered all of the intellectual outputs and the objectives.
1. An equine entrepreneurship education network was set up with the four partner schools participating in the project. This is in part connected to an existing equine educators network (EEN) because some of the partner schools participate in both networks.
2. The existing curricula of the participating schools were compared. The strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum of each school were analysed. This led to the creation of a plan for the future regarding the exchange of students and the continuation of the project.
3. The key competences needed by the sector were defined. The key competences were all also used to implement the mini company project at the partner schools.
4. A website was set up to encourage participation of other schools in the project and to be able to share the intellectual outputs.
5. Two students from each partner schools participated in the mini company project. This project was very valuable in training the teachers to work with international students. It also highlighted many cultural issues that resulted from working with international students. A handbook for students participating in setting up a mini company was created (first in draft) and then evaluated and adapted at the end of the project.
6. At the end of the first year of the project, one of the partners (Equipeople) decided to stop participating in the project. The project was therefore completed (after an amendment) with 6 project partners. Four of the partners were colleges, training future equine entrepreneurs. The sectorraad represents the equine sector in the Netherlands. The Holland Horse Foundation is a network of leading Dutch equestrian businesses out of different branches of the equine sector, who are complimentary to each other. It proved difficult in this project to maintain the cooperation and active input of the non-college organisations.
7. Although there is a plan for the future needs and wishes for Equine students, the realisation of European ‘expertise centers’ has not been achieved in this project. The contacts between the partner colleges have been strengthened by this project and now provide an easy route for the exchange of students between the colleges. The teachers within this project have greatly benefited from this experience and some teacher exchange/visits have already occurred following completion of this project.
8. A considerable difficultly in this project has been to maintain meaningful contact between the physical meetings. The roosters of the participating staff members meant dat it was almost impossible for everyone to attend the proposed monthly Skype meetings. The attendance of the physical meetings was also very variable with mostly only one staff member attending from each school. This has resulted in a considerably lower realised budget for transnational meetings. Most of the communication for this project has been through emails in-between the physical meetings.
9. Halfway through the project there was a change in the project coordinator. In fact there were a lot of changes in the people participating in the project from the partner organisations. This certainly did not help to achieve the goals of this project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 134644 Eur

Project Coordinator

STICHTING AERES GROEP & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Sectorraad Paarden
• Chichester College
• Raahen koulutuskuntayhtymä
• Stichting Holland Horse Foundation
• Equipeople Ltd
• Roskilde Technical College