It’s My Future: Cultivating entrepreneurial mindsets from middle school Erasmus Project

Project Title

It’s My Future: Cultivating entrepreneurial mindsets from middle school

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

It’s My Future was a 3-year project (01/10/2015 and 31/07/2018) funded by the European Commission, under the Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships.

Through a consortium composed by 9 organisations across Europe, the project aimed to create a blended learning entrepreneurship education package for middle grades allowing students to learn about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and develop their entrepreneurial competences, building self-confidence that leads to fewer drop outs, better education choices and a stronger awareness of one’s talents and skills. This is an age level where students often make a “major education move” in terms of where they go next in their schooling career and they are very creative and open to positive role models, which can often be a turning point in children’s lives.
The project built upon on knowledge, expertise and existing good practices from eight education providers of entrepreneurship education across Europe and a Swedish company specialized on pedagogical consulting and digitalization of educational to create a deeper, more impactful and flexible modular approach. Therefore, the partners developed an eLearning module and an extra activity “Meeting with an Entrepreneur” to complement the traditional curriculum already in use. The two add-ons translated and adapted in seven languages provide an innovative model of implementation that combines online elements with traditional methods allowing the students to enhance the learning experience and extend it outside of the classroom.

The newly developed entrepreneurship education package was piloted in seven countries and reached more than 7,500 students, 400 teachers and 200 volunteers/entrepreneurs. Through the participation in the programme, students cultivated a deep understanding of entrepreneurship (over 81% of the students mentioned that the eLearning inspired them to see entrepreneurship positively) and improved their entrepreneurial skills (over 80% students refer to an improvement of their team work, decision making, communication and digital skills). Teachers developed their entrepreneurial knowledge and skills through 22 training sessions, over 100 opportunities for networking and collaboration with peers, support from JA organisations and access to high quality tools and methods (95% of the teachers classifying the eLearning as a high-level quality digital tool for entrepreneurship education). Volunteers improved their skills and awareness on the role they should play in education, creating a closer connection between the world of work and education and making students perceive education as meaningful (98% of volunteers mention that the programme enabled them to support the learning journey of the students and that they would recommend the experience to their colleagues).

The project shows high levels of sustainability and its results high potential to scale within and outside of the project consortium and to expand to different target groups.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 241644,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ung Företagsamhet i Sverige & Country: SE

Project Partners

• ASOCIATIA JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF ROMANIA
• NUORI YRITTAJYYS RY
• SIHTASUTUS JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENTI EESTI
• JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT EUROPE
• Fundacion Junior Achievement España
• Future First
• Österåkers Friskola AB