Be Your Own Boss Erasmus Project

Project Title

Be Your Own Boss

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Be Your Own Boss is a project which responds to the growing need for adults in peripheral communities to be able to develop their entrepreneurial skills so that they can enter the labour market at a point of their own choosing through creating their own jobs. This set against a background of economic recession, persistent unemployment and a shrinking job market. The context for Be Your Own Boss is that job creation, and entrepreneurialism, are proven ways for peripheral communities to develop their own futures and grow local economies – yet they are rarely given access to the tools and support, such as business incubation, which is necessary to allow this to happen.

BYOB aims to transfer and adapt a successful methodology of raising entrepreneurial skills and job creation to new socio-cultural and linguistic contexts across Europe. The objectives are to give adult educators, and therefore learners, access to a proven methodology, which is grounded in experience provided inside business incubators and supported by online learning materials. The results will be increased capacities of adult educators to develop entrepreneurial skills in learners and the actual creation of micro-businesses and jobs by the adult learners.

The partnership brings together a private business, an international NGO, national incubators, and those experienced in adult education from 6 different countries with a broad geographical scope. The profile of those the project will work with are adult educators, adult learners and business incubators who work in, and alongside, peripheral individuals and communities. These groups could be peripheral for any reason such as geographical, economical, social, etc. The aim is to work alongside these groups to create 30 new businesses, and therefore jobs, by the end of the pilot.

The partnership activities will include creating a detailed state of the art review of entrepreneurial support for adults and those in peripheral regions, the creation of handbooks for adult educators and business incubators to engage with these individuals, 30 e-tutorials for those both using and experiencing the methodology, a pilot in 3 different countries of the methodology and a website where the project experiences and created tools will be available in all partner languages. Alongside this there will be a detailed dissemination and exploitation plan, a monitoring and evaluation plan, a quality assurance plan and a set of 5 transnational meetings between partners which will include multiplier events in the forms of conferences, seminars or press events.

The methodology to be used in carrying out the project is an open approach to project management and participation where each partner has the lead on a different activity under the ultimate control of the project leader. There will be monthly skype meetings between the project lead and each partner and technology such as skype and dropbox will be used to allow all partners to access necessary documents and pro formas.

The results of the project will be a flexible model and methodology of job creation and entrepreneurial teaching for adults. It is a programme which will be supported by downloadable tools and resources. The result of the pilot will be 30 peripheral adult learners who have been supported to set up their own micro-businesses in their regions and the jobs which result from this. There will be a replicable and robust teaching model for the adult educators which has been disseminated at local, regional, national and international level. This will result in an impact at policy level.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 249051 Eur

Project Coordinator

BRIDGING TO THE FUTURE LTD & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Vitale Tecnologie Telecomunicazioni – Viteco S.r.l.
• Stichting Incubator
• OXFAM ITALIA ONLUS
• BUSINESS INCUBATOR – GOTSE DELCHEV, ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROMOTION CENTRE
• FUNDACION CENTRO EUROPEO DE EMPRESAS E INNOVACION DE MURICIA-CEEIM
• SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK