Creating OppoRtunities for Adult Learners through entrepreneurial competences Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creating OppoRtunities for Adult Learners through entrepreneurial competences

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: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Open and distance learning

Project Summary

CORAL is a pan-European educational pathway. It takes inspiration from the Recommendation “A new skills agenda for Europe” (COM 2016 – 381 Final) which urges to up-skill and re-skill the European labour force with new skills, in order to allow them in self-employment and support adults to acquire a minimum level of key competences and/or acquire a broader set of skills necessary to progress towards an upper secondary qualification or equivalent.
If Member States want to achieve the objectives of an innovative, smart and inclusive Europe included in the Europe 2020 Strategy, it is necessary for them to take into account the SMEs and microenterprises and facilitate their creation, as they have a huge potential for job creation, beat high unemployment rates, and thus to reduce poverty and social exclusion
By contrast, in Europe 70 million people lack adequate reading and writing skills, and even more have poor numeracy and digital skills, putting them at risk of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. More than half of the 12 million long-term unemployed are considered as low-skilled adults. (COM (2016) 381 Final).

In order to support their up-skilling CORAL will produce a set of tools to assess, educate and recognize entrepreneurial competences. This result is achieved through the realisation of 3 products, having as primary beneficiaries long-term unemployed adults and as secondary ones professional counsellors and educators of adults, as well as all the other professional figures involved in supporting activities for adult job seekers.

Those 3 products are characterised by:
a) the design, test and validation of an educational pathway and its assessment tool tailored at the needs of the target users;
b) a blended educational methodology (Online Start-Up Academy and Start-it LAB) which promotes motivation at lifelong learning, leveraging on the development of beneficiaries’ capabilities – this motivation will be supported by micro-units of learning outcomes so that users could easily experience the success, step by step, during the whole educational pathway;
c) the development of a path for recognition of competences acquired through non-formal and informal learning in support of professional update for adult educators and job counsellors.

The CORAL methodology, based on the appreciative validation, will be applied to the competences of digital-literacy but it is exploitable also for any other key or professional competence. Procedural guidelines will allow the transparent visibility, enhancement and true-objectification of the competences deriving from non-formal and informal learning.

In particular:
IO1 CORATOOL- Skills Assessment Toolkit for self-employment requirements – it’s an online self- assessment which adapts the framework EntreComp to the needs of long-term unemployed adults, to foster their entrepreneurial competences, in particular those needed to implement work-related activities typically operated in qualifications referenced at EQF4.

IO2 Online Start-up Academy – The educational pathway of CORAL will be designed and implemented in blended-mode according to the flipped-classroom logic. The theoretical and procedural aspects will be delivered through the Start-up Academy MOOC while the experiential laboratories of capabilities empowerment (Start-up LAB) will allow to experience a collaborative peer to peer learning process.

IO3 International Appreciative Validation – The third IO will basically represent the true-objectification of CORAL pathway, which basically means the collection of evidences and appreciative references in support of the recognition of the learning outcomes.

The direct beneficiaries of CORAL are low skilled, long-term unemployed (2+ years) adults coming from previous work experiences which can be referenced to EQF level 4. This is a fragile target since the more they stay unemployed the more it becomes difficult for them to find a job. The intermediate beneficiaries are PES, public and private employment agencies and education providers for adults, who can incorporate the Kit within their upskilling pathways of adults competences.

This project will be transnationally delivered since the development of KIT requires a degree of internationalization of contents and technical solutions, as well as a validation of products which allows its usability at the European level. Moreover, it is essential to share know-how and resources from organizations that complement each other, as no single organization is able to embark on this challenge on its own. For CORAL project, 9 partner organisations (public and private) from 8 countries are combining their expertise in innovative didactics and their competence in the field of adult education. Adult education providers, private employment services, public bodies in labour and adult-education field, chamber of commerce, university, foundation, EU-wide networks were all identified as strategic types of partner.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 279945,37 Eur

Project Coordinator

ALFMED & Country: FR

Project Partners

• bit cz training, s.r.o.
• Università degli Studi di Roma “Unitelma Sapienza”
• Foundation for the Promotion of Entrepreneurial Initiatives
• DANMAR COMPUTERS SP ZOO
• INSTALOFI LEVANTE SL
• E.RI.FO.-ENTE DI RICERCA E FORMAZIONE
• Foyle International Ltd.