Building a small enterprise at school – Promoting our country abroad Erasmus Project

Project Title

Building a small enterprise at school – Promoting our country abroad

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The program “Building a small enterprise at school – promoting our country abroad” was a program based on team work for Primary and High school students. Its aim was to help the students discover their local culture and promote it using IT Technologies, the English language, work in Workshops led by teachers and improve management skills and entrepreneurship.
Description of undertaken main activities
The topics at the Workshops included Tourism, History and Mythology, Healthy living, National Literature and Poetry, National Art and music, local environmental issues, Accepting Diversity issues, Sports and Adventure. Each Workshop was concluded in three months’ time, producing knowledge, relevant to the targets and disseminated to the partner schools and the local community. A whole class of pupils aged 6 to 15 worked at each Workshop for at least an hour a week for a period of three months. Students had the chance to discover their local culture, and working in teams to promote it to the partner schools. A number of them travelled abroad to visit the partner schools along with their Leader Teachers in order to share their experience and learn about the diversified needs of other cultures, belonging to the European Family.The Activities included the phase of Discovering and getting Information about the topic discussed at each Workshop. Teams were formed in order to work on promoting each subject. The pupils achieved a common product and they were helped by their teachers to evaluate and disseminate it and thus, become the young “businessmen” having a good idea of how enterprises work. Identifying themselves as part of a team, the whole process strengthened the consciousness of belonging to the European Community and helped students achieve a higher level of self esteem. Educational visits to local sights of interest, relevant to the topic, were made. Interviews, material gathering, searching and developing ways of discovering deeper each topic were also made. During the 5-days seminars, there were activities aiming to share the gained experience and achieve more ways to disseminate the final products of the Workshops of all participating countries.

Objectives
1. Motivate the pupils to learn how to work in teams, as a small enterprise,
2. Help them evaluate their product together with their leader teachers
3. Encourage the pupils to disseminate their work.
4. Promote the enhancement of the use of Foreign languages,
5. Make them be familiar with the use of IT Technologies.
6. To discover the challenge of management and its efficiency, thus making education more attractive.
Number and profile of participating organisations
The program started with 8 partner schools:
Greece, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Lithuania, Italy, Cyprus and Turkey. On the way, the Turkish partner school withdrew from the program, in the summer of 2016 and the workshop of Healthy Living, planned for Turkey, was cancelled. However, some partner schools (Greece, Portugal) worked on it , in favor of the experience (as their NA advised them), and their products were posted by them on the common site. Also the mobilities planned both for the learning Activities and the project meeting in Turkey were done during the next meetings. The Spanish partner school withdrew on 17/1 17, with no complications to the program since the meeting there had already been done.
Results and impact attained
The pupils learned how to work as a team in a small enterprise, as they were divided in teams and they discovered the challenge of management and its efficiency. This had a positive impact on the participants and made education more attractive through the means of discovering how to have more efficient results. . They were given responsibilities according to their abilities and likes.They learned how to evaluate their products together with their teachers through questionnaires designed for this purpose. Results were placed on the school walls and on the common site. They also learned how to disseminate their work, by uploading it to the common web site, by publishing all the events to the local newspaper, by putting it on the school walls, by writing a school newspaper and by holding exhibitions at school for the local society. All the work was done in the English language, mostly with the help of Technology.
The longer-term benefits for the students are obvious, as they learnt from a very small age to work the way mentioned above.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 243105 Eur

Project Coordinator

5 DIMOTIKO SCHOLEIO PALAIOU FALIROU & Country: EL

Project Partners

• Szkola Podstawowa Nr 20
• Vilniaus “Genio” pradine mokykla
• OZEL BURC VURAL ORTAOKULU
• Agrupamento de Escolas Diogo Cão, Vila Real
• CEIP EL PICACHO
• IC 29 MIRAGLIA-SOGLIANO
• B Periferiako Gymnasium Nicosia(Klirou)