English for Social Entrepreneurship Erasmus Project

Project Title

English for Social Entrepreneurship

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social entrepreneurship / social innovation; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

English for Social Entrepreneurship was a project in which six partner schools from Romania (coordinator), Poland, Spain, Turkey, Lithuania and Italy intended to combine teaching of English with social entrepreneurship. They planned to make their students more sensitive to social needs their local societies have. Social Entrepreneurship was a field which was not that well developed and discussed in the countries involved in the project. The main goal of the social entrepreneur is not to make profit, but to implement widespread improvements in their society, to solve a social need. Partners believed that their students need to learn from an early age how to care about the others and the society they live in.
In order to improve their ability to solve problems observed in their local societies, partner schools in this project believed that it was a great idea to be able to analyse, compare and possibly to jointly try to solve their problems and build social enterprises. That greatly increased students’ motivation to learn and work in order to achieve their goals. Similarly it influenced the teachers assisting them. When one sees the need to learn a language he/she acquires it faster and more effectively. Therefore partners agreed that implementing CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) methodology would be desirable. The partners’ common goal was to make students used English and vocabulary related to Entrepreneurship in real life situations.
Prior to application, representatives of all partners identified a common need which was to increase the professional insertion and to improve the career prospects of students by developing their communication skills in English regarding the social entrepreneurship. The proposed project achieved these four main objectives:
• to discover, explore and enhance students’ Social Entrepreneurial skills and knowledge
• to promote content and language integrated learning in the field of Social Entrepreneurship and of the English language
• to develop students’ skills, knowledge and the necessary know-how of creating/devising and running a Social Enterprise
• to improve teachers’ teaching methods using CLIL giving a European dimension to their curricula
Project activities were designed to achieve the above goals and foresaw the use of CLIL in local work and teaching how to create a social enterprise step by step – from the idea and market research, through product/service design and learning about legal requirements and finances to the business creation and its presentation. Partners hope that some of the enterprise ideas may become real ones or some clues for local authorities or institutions trying to solve social problems in communities.
All project results were created step by step together with its progress and where possible digitalised and published in the project website. These were:
• business plans for every partner’s social enterprises
• lectures and workshops in particular topics of project stages
• informative brochures
• annual e-magazine with information about project activities
• a YouTube channel
• a DVD with key aspects
• a booklet
• a promotional video of the project
This project also created intangible results, which were:
• improving students’ professional English level
• developing tolerance, empathy, global citizenship, the ability to pass over cultural and linguistic barriers
• giving a European dimension to education
Every school had a team of minimum 30 students aged 12-17 depending on the school’s size and type who were supervised by a team of teachers (English, ICT, Entrepreneurship, Arts, Social studies or career advisers). Most of the students came from fewer opportunities backgrounds – in particular of socio economic character.
Partners hope that some of the enterprise ideas may become real ones or some clues for local institutions trying to solve social problems. The possibility to learn and try to solve their local social problems and teach students entrepreneurship at the same time in international company was a driving power of this project. Chance to experience different problems and attitudes towards solving them combined with possibilities to exchange good practices was a great motivation to make a successful project. What is more all partner schools were able to include a new English teaching / learning methodology (CLIL) in their schools’ curricula, which improved their educational effectiveness. Participation in this project facilitated its participating students situation on labour market after having finished education, allowing them to make better choices when deciding on their further education on higher levels. In order to achieve that aim all schools issued proper Europass certificates to all project participants.

Project Website

https://en4se.weebly.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 176231 Eur

Project Coordinator

Colegiul National de Informatica Spiru Haret & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Colegio Los Olivos
• VSI Kauno Juozo Urbsio Progimnazija/Kaunas Juozas Urbsys Progymnasium
• Istituto Istruzione Secondario Superiore “Ruggero II”
• Ibrahim Tanriverdi Sosyal Bilimler Lisesi
• Szkola Podstawowa im. Sw. Krolowej Jadwigi w Kunowej