The ME-commercer: a new VET professional profile for Micro Enterprises Erasmus Project

Project Title

The ME-commercer: a new VET professional profile for Micro Enterprises

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project background was built on the set of the legal documents and statistical data analysis. Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000, which indicates the need of the implementation of new professionals, able to support enterprises, above all Micro Enterprises, in new market challenges offering them technical and specific competences, strong entrepreneurship attitude, developed transversal skills, and great skills in learning to learn, as the digital market technologies and strategies are an on-going updated knowledge area. Eurostat data analysis on ICT usage and e-commerce reveals, that currently only 16% of small enterprises engaged in e-sales. The Micro Enterprises are accountable for more than two thirds of the EU’s workforce (ESBA) but, as a consequence of their small dimension they often have not the internal resources to face the challenge of a digital global market, are often vulnerable, underdeveloped, suffering from local segregation and facing severe economical crisis but are rich in tradition and human resources and have enormous e-commerce opportunities to spoil. The demand for an educational opportunities where small businesses, especially micro-enterprises could gain the respective competencies, was anticipated in the application phase of the project.
According to this background, the main project goals were identified: to design, implement, promote and test, starting from a research at EU, national, regional and local level within the market contest and by a glocal perspective, a professional able to match the training offer and the market needs: a specific professional profile able to help local Micro Enterprises to face the market challenges and to tackle, by a tailored made approach, their marketing needs; to generate new job opportunities for trained young people; to enhance Micro Enterprises market visibility, fostering their entrepreneurship capacity and building strong local opportunities; to tackle the topic by a cross-sectoral approach matching the needs of VET agencies, VET learners and Micro Enterprises; to develop a cross-sectorial partnership to look at the topic by a 360° perspective.
The project objectives were strictly related to the identified target group and to the key stakeholders needs. Partnership determined the main target group – VET learners or VET post-graduates aged 20 to 35 and/or having sectorial competences and/or having previous experiences in the marketing field, currently unemployed or underemployed, while the end beneficiaries were the Micro enterprises located in the partner’s business activity areas.
To reach its objectives and the selected target groups, the project implemented as Intellectual Outputs, a research, as a starting document on which builded the following project steps, and an e-learning Platform https://learning.me-commercer.eu/ for ME-commercer.
All the project activities were carried out by four partners coming from Lithuania, Italy, Czech Republic and Spain, belonging to different business and social sectors and dealing with different topics (training, marketing, labour market, economy), which are responsible for the further project results sustainability according the agreed and signed Memorandum of Understanding.
Impact on the participating organizations was expressed by the opportunity to build and expand their expertise, enrich their curricula and, for what concerns the VET partners, widen their training offer, establish and reinforce the European partnerships, to share good practice, establish contacts concerning the project topics and increased the internal innovation environment and its quality during the project.
Participants of the training programme gain skills, competences and knowledge regarding the local, regional, national and EU framework contexts related to entrepreneurship and e-commerce, specific skills to develop e-commerce for the Micro enterprises. This possibility engage them to the network of professionals and stakeholders enabling them to gain more opportunities to work both in national and international contexts and lets to expect at least 200 ME-commercers for Micro Enterprises, with a new professional to spend on European labour market.
The expected transversal impacts to the stakeholders refer to the possibility to hire and/or collaborate with professionals with a specific expertise around the focused topics. Stakeholders can benefit from best practices exchange emerging from project outputs, in order to widen their perspectives, understand the importance to match their own different competences, updating together the economic framework of their own territories.
The appreciable impact is also measured on the VET providers, able to enrich the content of the training, enable their graduates choose the e-commerce activities as the step to the economical activities in the labour market.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 131040 Eur

Project Coordinator

Viesoji istaiga Panevezio darbo rinkos mokymo centras & Country: LT

Project Partners

• Cámara Oficial de Comercio, Industria y Servicios de Cáceres
• Bluebook s.r.l.
• ProEduca z.s.