Get Ready for Opportunities in the World of Work – (Strategies and Initiatives New in Education to Reinforce Grounding in Employability and Entrepreneurship) Erasmus Project

Project Title

Get Ready for Opportunities in the World of Work – (Strategies and Initiatives New in Education to Reinforce Grounding in Employability and 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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The concept of this project GROWW-Get Ready for the Opportunities in the World of Work- evolved through work on а previous project on youth problems. Unemployment, Anxiety about the future, Ineffective education,Demotivation needed to be further tackled, the solutions to them sought in building up with students’ confidence coming with competence and skills. The area of employability and entrepreneurship was waiting for us to be explored as it could help students develop an enormous array of skills necessary for the world of work. SINERGEE – Strategies and Initiatives, New in Education to Reinforce Grounding in Employability and Entrepreneurship ( including social entrepreneurship) was focused on. 7 partners (Bulgaria,Finland,France,Italy,Roumania,Poland,Portugal) brought together skills, knowledge and expertise to work towards what is today’s school major task- teach students(aged 15-20) to recognise and develop their potential as individuals and teammates and build up the right set of attitudes,skills and knowledge that can ensure their capability of being effective in the workplace to the benefit of themselves and society.
The fact that we focused on social entrepreneurship was both complementary and innovative. Feel about and act on social change was the truly challenging part of the project. The world of work develops globally and shares similar characteristics. Social problems exist everywhere and wait to be addressed. So there was a need to tackle these in view of active citizenship and social inclusion throughout the EU.
The project comprised 3 stages:
Employability: Activities focused on building up employability skills. Students learnt how to write a CV, a motivation letter, learnt about European certificates. They identified strengths and areas they needed to develop, learnt about the skills and traits most valued by employers, what brings job satisfaction, how to choose a profession, search for a job, strategies for job interviews. At the end of this stage, students were able to identify the areas they needed to develop, make an action plan; write a reference to recommend a partner for a position, a motivation letter. Where applicable there were summer placements – students recorded their use of skills and fulfilled a questionnaire.
Entrepreneurship:There was an exchange of good practices. Students learnt about entrepreneurship with the active support of teachers, who were strongly involved at this stage by learning themselves more about entrepreneurship, facilitated by colleagues, next they developed teaching tools. Students learnt about the skills and traits of successful entrepreneurs. They visited small companies, studied strategies, methodology approaches, tools. Teams were formed to encompass more students making first steps in entrepreneurship by making business plans and setting up enterprise challenges.
Social entrepreneurship: Studied the basics and compared with Business entrepreneurship. There were workshops on:what Social entrepreneurship is, who is a social entrepreneur, how to identify social opportunity, create a business model, identify the legal context, and social needs of a community, create a social change, outline ideas in a business plan to launch a social enterprise.
All this was achieved through informal and non-formal learning: workshops, thought showering, discussions, research, presentations, group work, self-assessment, teamwork, drawing profiles, interviewing parents, community, recruitment agencies, preparing posters, role play, forums, inquiries and questionnaires, legwork, face to face meetings, discussions, roundtable, filming.
Students remembered, understood, applied, compared, constructed, deconstructed, analyzed, reflected, evaluated, created.
We shifted from theory to practice and learnt about and from other perspectives on shared challenges. We learnt through doing and relied on our resourcefulness. The strategies and approaches, as well as the final output, are definitely innovative. The ultimate product – an EEE Guide, supplemented with worksheets on developing employability and entrepreneurship was designed with a view to getting a serious impact on participants and target groups.
The impact was on enhancing the following employability and entrepreneurial skills: communication, teamwork, responsibility, positive attitude, tolerance, critical thinking, resourcefulness, sensitivity to people’s needs, time management, business awareness, research skills, problem-solving, confidence in self-expression, language and ICT skills. Students are, all in all, expected to have built up a wide spectre of personal and transferable skills, complementary to the set of employability, enterprising and entrepreneurial skills.
Work with students outside the box stimulated our motivation to search for innovative and good practices and approaches and inspired us for lifelong learning.
Sharing of good practices was useful for all partner schools and outside stakeholders.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 126370 Eur

Project Coordinator

Angliiska Ezikova Gimnaziya Geo Milev & Country: BG

Project Partners

• LYCÉE POLYVALENT GABRIEL TOUCHARD-GEORGE WASHINGTON
• Colegiul National de Informatica Piatra Neamt
• Agrupamento de Escolas D. Sancho I
• Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace w Bieczu
• Etelä-Karjalan koulutuskuntayhtymä
• Istituto Statale di Istruzione Superiore “Fermi-Mattei”