From Refugee to Entrepreneur Erasmus Project

Project Title

From Refugee to Entrepreneur

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Integration of refugees; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

One of the four common EU objectives of the Education and training 2020 (ET 2020) framework to address challenges in education and training systems by 2020 is to enhance creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training.

In the past years, more than one million refugees have come to Europe, and the influx will continue also in the years to come. Apart from political questions concerning their distribution, the most urgent aspects are their integration into our society and their employment.

A refugee entrepreneur, like any entrepreneur, brings many potential benefits to the host community. First of all, an entrepreneur creates at least one job for her-/himself. In addition they can employ other refugees and/or host country nationals. The kind of businesses opened by refugees often reflect innovative solutions to local problems and are therefore more effective at addressing the needs of specific target groups than large, donor-driven programmes.

Having a (social) enterprise can also help to create normality in a difficult surrounding. Providing familiar food or wedding dresses not only brings employment, but also ways to unite communities, preserve traditions and a sense of normality. Overall, it can be said that entrepreneurship improves the psychological well-being of individuals and the overall atmosphere.

Becoming an entrepreneur is always a challenge and often not the most obvious choice for a refugee. He/she needs, above all, information provision, networking (with both other refugees/migrants and members of the host community), mentoring, training, and finally also investment and funding. All of these are equally relevant in the refugee context.

Therefore, the overall objective of our strategic partnership is to provide an overview about projects, initiatives and methods which train, support and facilitate entrepreneurship for immigrants, and in particular for women.

In order to reach this objective, the specific objectives are

1)
To implement an e-platform with an interactive database, searchable after various parameters, that describes and gives access to initiatives, tools and methods and other materials that have been identified and collected in the course of the project, concerning market conditions, policies, administrational settings, entrepreneurship skills and support programmes for immigrant entrepreneurs, in particular women, as well as how to train skills and knowledge to generate creative ideas especially in IT based business. . The database will have explanations in the languages of the partnership.

2)
To elaborate a Catalogue “Supports for Refugee Entrepreneurs” which will give an overview about the current situation of the specific project environment in the partners’ countries. It will be enriched with the outcomes of the transnational meetings of the four meetings in each partner country where experts from the respective national and local vocational counselling organisations will discuss these issues with the representatives of our strategic partnership.

3)
To organise an online interactive Forum for exchange of experience and good practice that will promote networking and exchange activities not only among the partnership and VET organisations in their countries, but also on a European level. With new translation services, it will become possible to break down language barriers between users from different countries, and to foster exchange and assist initiatives that contribute to the European society as a whole.

The target group of our project are VET and adult education trainers and organisations that will make use of the identified and selected materials to design and offer respective measures for refugees who want to become entrepreneurs.

Project Website

https://www.wissenschaftsinitiative.at/refent/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 43493 Eur

Project Coordinator

INI-NOVATION GMBH & Country: DE

Project Partners

• QUALED obcianske zdruzenie pre kvalifikáciu a vzdelávanje
• Wissenschaftsinitiative Niederösterreich (WIN)
• INTEGRA INSTITUT INSTITUT ZA RAZVOJ CLOVEKOVIH POTENCIALOV VELENJE