Little Sociopreneurs! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Little Sociopreneurs!

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: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

In response to the world financial and ethical crisis and to European key policy objectives the current project focused on improving the 21st century skills of students by developing their entrepreneurial skills enriched with social and environmental added value. Therefore, students, especially the less able, were exposed to alternative entrepreneurial activities in order to discover their talents and acquire the means to put them to practice to achieve success.
As the main role of education is to create ethical and democratic adults, we integrated an innovative approach of social entrepreneurship, the environmental (green) entrepreneurship. Environmental entrepreneurship, is a type of social entrepreneurship, exercised to resolve environmental challenges, towards the efficient operation of the market and for the enhancement of ecological sustainability (Dean and McMullen, 2007). It aims to create simultaneous economic and ecological benefit (Thompson, Kiefer and York, 2011).
In order to benefit more from this approach we implemented Environmental Entrepreneurial activities using CLIL (Content Integrated Language Learning) and through the Arts (Painting, Sculpting, Weaving, Printing, Animation, Video Art) and Cultural Heritage (tangible and intangible). As 2018 was the Year of Cultural Heritage, we decided to celebrate our diverse cultural heritage across Europe. The aim of the European Year of Cultural Heritage was to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe’s cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space. The objectives of the project was to equip the teachers, the students and the community with the teaching and learning skills on social and green entrepreneurship. Participants derived form six countries: Cyprus (2 schools), Slovenia, Bulgaria, Spain and Croatia. Each school offered equally in the project, addressing the learning procedures with detail and enriching their existing curriculum with environmental entrepreneurial activities.
Activities included meeting each other, both physically and virtually, holding special events in each partner school, train the staff to meet and enrich entrepreneurial teaching skills, curriculum development for cross curriculum learning and community engagement and learning. The innovative curriculum implementation included raising students’ awareness on the environmental and cultural heritage issues that local communities confront, suggest viable solutions, thus design and create them. In the end, students created mini companies that suggested viable products for promoting the local cultural heritage. The most valuable result of this project was the development of cultural heritage products for kids, to enhance cultural heritage awareness and engagement. Profits that came of the products sales were donated to cultural non-profit foundations or companies in order to support their cause. A quick search in the project’s activities will reveal that all stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, community) were educated in the theoretical and practical dimensions of environmental entrepreneurship and cultural heritage!
The project had a dissemination strategy including the development of Social Media pages in Facebook and Instagram, Website, eTwinning page, Padlet and communication of the activities in local media. Partner schools included news on the project development in Parents’ newsletter and on their websites and social media pages.
The evaluation of the programme was based on a mixed method approach. The quantitative approach was held in terms of pre and post questionnaires in order to assess students knowledge, skills, roles and environmental agency . The qualitative approach included the interviews of the participating teachers on 1.their overall experience in this innovative programme and 2. whether the programme we developed and practiced had positive results on students learning results, as well as observation during the implementation during all the 10 lessons in two of the participating classes. According to the evaluation results, by experiencing Environmental Entrepreneurship students developed their entrepreneurial skills along with the development of their environmental agency. More specifically, they improved skills like critical and ethical thinking and action, decision making, team building, creativity, communication, presentation, problem solving, self-respect and self-control. Additionally, observations and interviews with teachers led to the refinement of the initial syllabus, namely the ‘Environmental Entrepreneurship Guide’.
The impact and results include up skilled teachers with understanding of environmental entrepreneurship education and students who are environmentally and entrepreneurially aware and will become agents of change in the future.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 79827,88 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kato Polemidia A’ Primary School & Country: CY

Project Partners

• DIMOTIKO SCHOLEIO PANO POLEMIDION – KARMIOTISSAS – PERIFEREIAKO
• VRTEC GALJEVICA
• Osnovno uchilishte Hristo Smirnenski
• Fundació Vedruna Catalunya Educació
• Medjunarodna osnovna skola Vedri obzori