Community of Entrepreneurs – Action Learning Program Erasmus Project

Project Title

Community of Entrepreneurs – Action Learning Program

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 youth

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; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

The CEAL network has developed since 2014, with support of Erasmusplus, a process for Community-based Entrepreneurship Action Learning programs. The main objective of the strategic partnership was to build a new way of non-formal education for young social and community entrepreneurs.

The CEAL network and process-model has been developed, based on the premise that in the current context of challenges we face in Europe, in a context of unemployment and precariousness, new attitudes, new education and experiences are necessary. We see that in current socio-economic contexts across Europe there’s a strong need from and for the youth to take the future they desire into their own hands.

To answer to this need the partnerships’ objectives within the building a new form of non-formal education were organizing multi-stakeholder pilots locally, building up capacity of trainers/facilitators through executed projects that lead to sustainable impact in the communities and adoption of the program by universities. Additional objectives were strengthening the network and through the shared experiences build a toolbox, curriculum and learning platform.

During the two years the CEAL-network partners of Madrid, Bilbao (Spain), Berlin (Germany), Utrecht (Holland), Frome (UK) and Gent (Belgium) assembled a team of local partners, consisting of an educational partner and a community partner. The profile of the organizations involved include universities, non-formal educational institutions, a school of community entrepreneurship, community-organizations, NGO’s, neighbourhood associations, social welfare institutions and cooperatives that work on the edge of community mobilization, social entrepreneurship and education.

These local partnerships visited over the period of the partnership the various international trainings, while locally setting up programs in different communities, joining a group of community members, local youth and students. Trainings included:
– a 6 day gathering with the main purpose of getting fully acquainted with the Elos Philosophy and Oasis Game, the framework and inspiration that thrives this project.
– A 5 day gathering in Frome (UK) with the main purpose of getting fully acquainted with the Edventure model and to further deepen our practice of designing programs using their experience with pedagogical frameworks of the community entreprise school they run.
– a 5 day gathering in Utrecht with the main purpose of diving deeper into community entrepreneurship, how to sustain it and how to integrate the experience in personal- and community-setting.

From late August 2015 till June 2016 in the 6 partner cities, 2 to 3 months local multi-stakeholder pilot programs were executed in local communities. 63 students, 40 local youth, 60 community members and other stakeholders got involved to work in 6 communities, sparking the realization of 20 projects of which most are sustained in local context or have been turned into community projects with a value exchange and therewith socio-economic impact. Projects included revitalization of community spaces, setting up of a community food sharing fridge, community-talent-festivals to village tourism project.

Most of all CEAL pilots brought students and youth in communities together to learn to create entrepreneurial social projects and learn skills and attitudes through doing it. The experience of taking students out of the classroom and community-members out of their houses, offered many lessons of new ways of collaboration and the creation of value propositions on a community-level. Programs took place in urban and rural communities, challenging participants to bridge differences in backgrounds while realizing concrete results together.

The CEAL-program is inspired by a Brazilian methodology, the Elos philosophy and its’ Oasis Game, that focusses on local talents and common dreams, which has been applied worldwide for over 15 years worldwide. Based on the underlying Elos philosophy and experience with community-entrepreneurship during the pilotprograms the foundation was laid for the CEAL-processmodel released in September 2016.

Based on the systemization of the experiences the CEAL-network has created a toolbox and process design package, which contains a processmap, activity cards, supporting toolcards and a guide. These tools are supported by a learning platform which consists of stories, cases, blogs on ceal.eu in connection to the wikispace where we offer materials and dialogue giving the future user all the input to create a CEAL-curriculum.

Nowadays the CEALnetwork consists of organizations from various European countries who work in the field of education, community development and process facilitation. A large part of the projects initiated during the pilots are sustainably continuing on their path of development.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 146944 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stichting Elos Nederland & Country: NL

Project Partners

• KIRIBIL SAREA
• Instituto Elos Brazil
• Act4Change
• Altekio, iniciativas hacia la sostenibilidad, S.Coop.Mad.
• Ideen hoch drei e.V.
• Edventure Frome Community Interest Company