Building Social Bridges by Entrepreneurial Thinking Erasmus Project

Project Title

Building Social Bridges by Entrepreneurial Thinking

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Social dialogue; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Building Social Bridges by Entrepreneurial Thinking: the overall aim of this project is to facilitate and pave the way for sustainable social inclusion among socially marginalized groups through improving their entrepreneurial mindset and competences. In the project we focus on increasing social capital which often goes hand in hand with the increasing of cultural and economic capital. Social capital has commonly been used as a term to characterize the networks that link people together in useful ways (bridging capital) and build reciprocity and social solidarity through shared norms and loyalties (bonding capital). Social capital is a constructive source of participation and community relations; thus it is an important resource for adult learners aiming at better accessing labour market, local communities and social groups.

The main beneficiaries of the project are marginalized groups in European societies who are educationally and socially disadvantaged. According to Eurostat (2012) circa 24% of the European population risks poverty or social exclusion. Due to the expertise of the participating organizations the project partnership will concentrate on the work with migrants and refugees on one hand, and with drop-outs of the compulsory school-system as vulnerable sub group on the other hand. During the project lifetime, we expect to include 100 end beneficiaries and 20 role models as active participants directly into the project flow. Major target groups of the project outputs will be teachers and stakeholders in adult learning, and other educational and social sectors.

To increase any type of capital, an entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial competences are needed. What is important in the project approach is that we do not work on entrepreneurship with the objective to create small companies, businesses etc. We focus on entrepreneurial thinking as a means to increasing social capital to motivate people to create, or access and develop networks and communities to link people to the external environment beyond the confines of one´s own affinity group. They should become change makers of their life as well as in the community. The main strategy to achieve this goal is to work with role models – preferable role models who have faced challenges comparable to those the learners are facing. Role models will be people who achieved to build social bridges against all the external circumstances and obstacles. Building up an entrepreneurial mindset is including knowledge about ones’ own values and fears. For example, if one does not allow oneself to fail, to take risks, to be active in the planning ones’ own life, it will block the approach to and the motivation to learn and to improve the own situation.

The project will result in 3 intellectual outputs:
– A review on recent research of good practice in working on the entrepreneurial mindset and competences and of working with role models.
– Portraits of role models for entrepreneurial thinking, highlighting why people have had success and have been able to increase their social capital and we will make the findings accessible to the public. These role models will come out of the beneficiary groups of the project. At the end there will be portraits and descriptions of these role models and their secrets, accessible for the public and useable for educational activities, aiming at fostering entrepreneurial thinking and beyond.
– A toolkit for teachers, trainers, stakeholders and multipliers from adult learning institutions and other educational / social sectors, in which the training programme developed in the project will be published together with the training methodologies applied by the partners, and learning experiences made by training participants.

We want to highlight the importance of building bridges to external environments, and how helpful communities, associations etc. are for gathering a better position and voice in local societies. We want to assess the beneficiaries’ entrepreneurial competences by different methods (i.e. portfolio work) and give them feedback. This will be done in workshops and trainings. We will improve the entrepreneurial competences and change the entrepreneurial mindset by a process of dialogue with the role models and the reflection on this experience. The partners will work on the objectives with different methods due to their strengths – creative methods, blended and online learning.

Through the possibility to transfer the project outcomes to other target groups, further effects of the project may arise at long term. This concerns stakeholders (professionals from education and training institutions, social services and migrant organisations) that are incorporated in the project, and should help to ensure the sustainability of project outcomes.

Project Website

https://buildingsocialbridges.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 206972 Eur

Project Coordinator

Verein Niedersächsischer Bildungsinitiativen e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Videnscenter for Integration
• CENTRO PER LO SVILUPPO CREATIVO DANILO DOLCI
• uniT GmbH
• CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET