Get On Your Bikes, Europe’s Back In Business! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Get On Your Bikes, Europe’s Back In Business!

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Transport and mobility; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

“Get On Your Bikes, Europe’s Back In Business!” was a strategic collaborative partnership emerged from the need to provide students with the necessary skills to help them cope with the current difficult economic situation in Europe. Thus, the project aimed to develop students’ entrepreneurial competences through a sustainable way of living, as well as by generating a sense of responsibility for one’s health. In order to achieve these, the simple activity of cycling was at the heart of all project activities. Cycling combined with the idea of sustainable tourism enterprise was an innovative issue which implemented consciousness on a positive lifestyle, upraised and fostered entrepreneurial mind-sets and skills and encouraged active citizenship and new social enterprise creation.

The project participants were about 340 students, aged 14-20, from eight schools across Europe, from countries that experienced the negative effects of the difficult economic situation: Romania, Poland, Italy, Croatia, Germany, Latvia, Slovenia, Czech Republic. Seven of the partner schools were vocational schools, training students in tourism (Romanian and Italian schools), electronics (Polish school), health, building trades and agriculture (Croatian school), business administration and ICT (German school) and economic subjects (Latvian and Slovenian schools); the eighth institution, from Czech Republic, was specialized in general education with focus on IT, Geography and sports.

The methodology of the partnership was “hands-on”, meaning that, in order to face the economic crisis, students created products for the market by themselves, such as PR campaigns to promote cycling or potential accessories to support bikers. Furthermore, they set up an interactive website for cyclists to attract young people and travellers. These products led to a student-managed virtual practice company whose object was to arrange adventure cycling trips (taking place off-road) in different European countries.

The three interconnected results of the project – “Get on your bikes” toolkit, “Get on the trail” website and “Back in business” methodological guide – promote cycling in different ways: the toolkit offers practical solutions about how to overcome obstacles that inhibit the uptake of cycling (PR methods for cycling, cycling schemes, new bike accessories, dealing with technical bike problems); the website includes information about bike-trails in 8 sample localities, referring to points of interest, maps, accommodation places; finally, the methodological guidebook offers instructions on how to set up a business in the field of sustainable tourism and contains the tested good practice example of a multinational company specialized in off-road bike trips. Our additional result, the report “Cycling measures and schemes implemented in Europe”, appeared through the investigation work carried out by students during transnational learning and training activities. They observed the way in which local authorities in smaller/larger communities put into practice concrete measures, schemes, actions meant to stimulate cycling and increase the number of people using the bike as a means of transport.

By working on the preparation of the project results, students learnt various subjects in an activity-oriented and project-oriented way. Thus, the subjects became more realistic (real life-based) to students as they would appear in a solely classroom-based education. Among these subjects, there were activities like market researches and surveys, presentations of results, designing marketing strategies and promotion campaigns, shooting and editing videos, creating user-friendly screen design (mock-ups) for websites, building a website, organizing adventure cycling events, repairing bikes, setting up a business, making a financial plan, creating strategies to sell cycling trips, learning how to ensure a sustainable environment and a healthy way of living etc.

Through the project activities, our students developed specific interests in one or more fields (technical, economic, touristic, healthcare, sport/cycling), they made new friends in participating countries and lost inhibitions relating to speaking a foreign language, they broadened their horizons and changed their perspective on different topics, gaining some new prospects for their individual future at the same time. Last but not least, there were longer term benefits for the participating institutions in terms of gains generated by planning and developing cross-curricular local activities, implemented within and beyond the project duration. The collaboration with local authorities and local touristic businesses was greatly enhanced through the project activities because local riches were also presented as potential places to visit in Europe. Besides these, we managed to strengthen the cooperation between schools and local/regional cycling or sports club having in view the creation of new activities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 293465 Eur

Project Coordinator

COLEGIUL ECONOMIC “PINTEA VITEAZUL” & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Gymnazium Zdar nad Sazavou
• Zespol Szkol Elektronicznych w Rzeszowie
• Srednja skola Bedekovcina
• Nautrenu vidusskola
• Ekonomska sola Celje
• Nicolaus-August-Otto-Schule Berufsbildende Schule Diez
• I.I.S. “Di Poppa-Rozzi”