International enterprises looking beyond borders : Young Entrepreneurs at Work Erasmus Project

Project Title

International enterprises looking beyond borders : Young Entrepreneurs at Work

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Creativity and culture; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

Context/Background:
Starting point is the idea to identify and fulfill the customers’ needs, coping with new marketing trends, following the demand for niche items, organic local produce, quality guaranteed products, experience based purchases.
An added value is represented by KA1 on staff mobility, already done between Italian and Dutch schools, having the “Development of entrepreneurship in young students” as the shared goal. The teachers involved were already in touch with the learning environments of respective schools.
General Objectives:
It is recognised that entrepreneurship is a major driver of innovation, competitiveness and growth.
By improving basic cross-curricular skills , broadening the potential of ICT and effective communicative use of English, we wanted to promote a work based learning and highlight that entrepreneurship is the key to fight the gap between formal, informal and non formal learning, looking for closer connections between school and work.

Number and profile of participating organisations:
The two secondary schools involved had had a quite consolidated story of cooperation with a Comenius and a KA1 staff mobility before starting this KA2. They share the context of vocational courses in the Agrarian field, but in Italy also the Tourist and Marketing courses could be involved.Overall we can say that both partners schools’ staff has gained good experience in the management of students’ learning out of the school environment, and is achieving a new perspective, including international open-mindedness , attracting foreign interest and promoting activities abroad.
Inclusion has been granted for disadvantaged students, either of socio-economic origin or of minority ethnicity, or of disabled categories, both light learning impairment (dyslexia and dysgraphia) and more demanding ADHD or ASD..

JA and its program YES supplied the canvas for all the steps in the startup and management of the mini companies.
The links with the farming and manufacturing economic sectors both in Italy and the Netherlands were strong and helped organizing visits and experiences. The links with University organizations and upper secondary institutions in both countries gave the chance to design challenging activities which took place in the form of short seminars and workshops and gave the students a perspective in their future choices.

Description of undertaken main Activities:
They started with learning about the procedures for establishing business. Students (males and females equally represented) did it with the startup of the Mini Enterprises. They studied how to develop a business plan, look for funding and finally organize the Market Days . The same steps took place every year with an increasing cooperation and interaction between the partner schools.
Studying online marketing strategies, building entrepreneurial virtual scenarios in fact has been just the first part of a process resulting in the actual organization of real International Markets, creating customized packets, getting in touch with the “real” customers from abroad. Every year 2 International Market Days were organized, one in Italy and one in the Netherlands. The main planned activity was to start up mini enterprises and develop skills and competences towards entrepreneurship.

In the first year students have tried to develop a product from a niche market or adapt an existing product.
Overall the students activities have included: A) Language content based (CLIL ) lessons delivered to the different nationality blended group of students, both at a distance (Skype) and during the visits at each other’s school; B) Joint activities to share formal and informal teaching/learning sessions, where English was necessarily the lingua franca for contents and case studies, as well as the communication language in all context visited outside schools.
In the second year managing handmade products created and assembled by students using either new or recycled materials.

In the third year the group of students made up integrated mini companies and could get in touch quite early (November) with the mini companies from both countries. This allowed the companies’ managers to meet and share ideas as for what online marketing tools to be used and promotional actions to be taken.

Results and impact attained:
Europe needs a more entrepreneurial culture. However, learning how to run a business is only one aspect of it. Entrepreneurship should be understood in its broader meaning. Entrepreneurial skills and attitudes provide benefits to society even beyond their application to business activity. They are also a vehicle for personal development. In fact, learning about entrepreneurship has included developing personal qualities such as creativity, taking initiative, responsibility, all soft skills that will be generally useful in life.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 81300 Eur

Project Coordinator

Edudelta College Goes & Country: NL

Project Partners

• IISS “Parentucelli/ Arzelà”