Entrepreneurship Education for Cultural Tourism Erasmus Project

Project Title

Entrepreneurship Education for Cultural Tourism

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

EECT was a Strategic Partnership (SP) of associations mostly from countries where youth and graduates’ unemployment rates are among the highest of the EU (see Eurostat “Youth unemployment rate – % 15-24”). In November 2015, 4.553 million young persons (under 25) were unemployed in the EU28, of whom 3.167 million were in the euro area. In particular, regional youth unemployment rates varied widely across the EU-28 (Eurostat, 2015) and amongst the EECT partner countries, with the lowest rate in the Danish region of Siddanmark (11.4%) and the Romanian region of București-Ilfov (14.6%) while with the highest rates in the Spanish region of Andalucia (56.8%) and the Italian region of Calabria (65.1%), where the partners of the SP have their main office. Sharing youth common interests in European cultural tourism (as an important source of employment) and Entrepreneurship Education, we aimed to encourage and promote new conditions of a more flexible and globalized labour market, fostering the self-development of youth. The labour market is constantly developing towards this direction, thus there is a strong need to have young professionals involved in the tourism market equipped with with new skills and the capacity to offer tourism services with with social approach.

Hence, the SP main objectives were:

-To offer education on cultural tourism entrepreneurship to disadvantaged groups
– To develop a new training methodology based on the blended mentoring method to foster creative thinking, entrepreneurship thinking competence supporting the matching between young participants expectations and the labour market
-To promote learning mobility of young participants
-To foster inclusive education which combat any kind of discrimination or racism in order to strengthen social ties as well as generate a sense of belonging
-To support the development of better knowledge about Entrepreneurship Education (specifically applied to cultural tourism) through support to youth research, research networks, specific studies, etc.
-To make effective use and facilitating the access of young people to EU funds and programmes.
-To encourage formal education and non-formal learning in support of young people’s innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.

The target group that EECT was addressing were those youngsters who are facing difficulties to enter on the labour market and at risk of social exclusion. Selection procedures for grants for the 16 youth participants were under the following criteria:
-Young universities students and young people with fewer opportunities
– gender balance (50% males-50% females)
– with no international experience

All activities have been planned according to the SMART principle. This is to say that partners have previously agreed on and working towards:
– Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound objectives

The project was managed in a collaborative way, based on collective intelligence and regular communication. The following methodology was applied: Plan, Do, Check, Act. This aimed to constantly monitor the project advancement and to ensure permanent quality improvement. We had planned one blended mobility overall project duration.

Impact on selected participants, were measured in terms of
– Improving participants entrepreneurship cultural tourism knowledge and skills, foreign languages, use of office technology and digital tools (MOOCs), and intercultural communication skills
– Improving participants’ abilities to develop a business model canvas in order to launch their entrepreneurship idea
– Experimenting new learning approach and practice, creating opportunities for professional dialogue and networking around Europe
– Improving participants’ knowledge and approach

Longer terms benefits

EECT formalized and legalized its network in an international association that will continue sustaining the project’s objectives after the project conclusion. The main intellectual output of the project were Online Moodle platform (IO1), MOOC Modules (IO2), Digital Guide on Entrepreneur Profiles in the Cultural Tourism Sector (IO3) and Training Guidelines in the field of cultural tourism entrepreneurship (IO4). An essential goal for sustainability, to which EECT contributed, was making all the output widely accessible (e.g EECT outputs are also available on SALTO). The Moodle platform and the project’s website will be maintained at least other 3 years.

The project aspired to establish ways in which the skills and knowledge acquired by the participants during the project can be introduced in their future job or future enterprise. Thanks to the innovations aimed at by the programme, existing non-formal entrepreneurship courses in the partner organizations will be made more interactive and focused on real life examples. Therefore they will be more appealing and more young with fewer opportuntieis might prefer to attend these courses to others.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 47733,6 Eur

Project Coordinator

Youth Mobility Denmark & Country: DK

Project Partners

• FUTURO DIGITALE
• ASOCIACION PROJUVEN
• ASOCIATIA GEYC