Designthinking: social entrepreneurship between european schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Designthinking: social entrepreneurship between european schools

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship)

Project Summary

I.INTRODUCTION.

In our association, we are convinced that with the robotization of the production, many of the jobs that currently exist will disappear in a short future. However, in schools, we continue with the nineteenth-century philosophy of preparing students to look for a job, when we really should be doing just the opposite, we should be preparing pupils to create their own job.

II. BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT.

Contributing to smart, sustained and inclusive growth is a great challenge, present and future, for Europe. The foundations of our association are found in the European response to this situation, which had as its genesis the “Strategic Framework for European cooperation in the field of education and training” (ET 2020); the “Green Paper” or the “European program in favor of entrepreneurship”. All of them establish as a priority the search for solutions for the employability of young people collective and the need to cooperate for the creation of a more social Europe.

III. PROJECT SUMMARY.

The project consisted in helping our students learn to invent a job instead of having to look for it. We provide students with the necessary skills so that they can undertake this challenge, from a social dimension, making intensive use of ICTs.
Hence, we established three restrictions to their business projects: the first was that its projects had to contribute to solving some of the social problems currently affecting Europe. The second, they had to use any of the following technologies: Arduino, 3D printing and / or augmented reality. And finally, they would work collaboratively on international teams.
Teachers guide them in all phases of the process of creating their business projects.

IV. OBJECTIVES.

1. Promote youth employment through social entrepreneurship.
2. Design and apply innovative educational practices.
3. Apply Benchmarking to the realities of partner schools to achieve knowledge transfer.
4. Promote the acquisition of key competencies.

V. NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS.

More than 5000 students and 108 teachers. The teaching profiles were mainly: business, technology and educational innovation. The participating student were young people with studies related to technology and business management mostly.

VI. DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT.

In order to simplify the enormous amount of activities carried out we must distinguish between:
• Activities carried out in mobilities which are enumerated in Sections 5.1 and 5.4 of this report. As you can see there were activities that involved the entire educational community and in which we involved a huge number of external agents. With them we get:
1) Apply benchmarking which contributed to the achievement of the objectives (Objectives 2, 3 and 4)
2) Incorporate a methodological change in our schools (Objectives 2 and 4)
3) The motivation of the students was fundamental because to have competent students, it was not enough that they “knew” but it was also necessary to get them to “want”. Training activities contributed to its achievement (Obj 1 and 4)
• Activities carried out through etwinning: they revolved around the specific training of students in very relevant areas of the project: the use of technology to solve social problems, entrepreneurship and educational innovation. Through them, teachers and students were able to work collaboratively in mixed teams exchanging ideas and knowledge that were necessary, among other things, to be able to develop the prototypes that were taken to the company fairs that we held in Romania.

VII. RESULTS AND IMPACTS ACHIEVED.

• We incorporate the objectives of the project in the Center Plan and, specifically, in the Educational Project of all partner schools, thus achieving that the project will be part of the daily work of the partner schools.
• We created our non-profit association ECIE: a huge network of agents of interest at European level that integrates foundations, companies, universities, families, etc.) involved in helping our young people to start from a social dimension.
• We develop exponentially the aptitudes and skills that will serve students to enter the labor market.
• We use the comparison of the business situation of the municipalities corresponding to the centers associated with that of their countries of origin, incorporating the strengths provided by the other environments.

VIII. LONGER TERM BENEFITS

Ultimately, the achievement of our objectives, was a very important boost in the fight against youth unemployment in the medium term not only at the local level, but also national and international.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 131210 Eur

Project Coordinator

I.E.S. Playamar & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Scoala Superioara Comerciala Nicolae Kretzulescu
• Mendelova stredni skola, Novy Jicin, prispevkova organizace
• BHAK/BHAS Weiz
• BGSZC Belvárosi Gazdasági Szakgimnáziuma
• Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “G.A. Pischedda”