Mini Entrepreneurs at School Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mini Entrepreneurs at School

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; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

One of the problems felt by the participants in the project is that many students leave school before completing their courses or, in some cases, just go to school because they are obliged to. This problem is pointed out in many guiding documents of the schools, such as in the Educational Project of each school and in the evaluation of the schools made by the Ministry of Education.
The project is based on a philosophy of holistic education and aims to encourage teachers to integrate new, practical, less used teaching strategies to the practical process of education incorporating the cultural knowledge and experience from project partner schools.
To meet these needs, the main goal of the project was improving and promoting teaching strategies and skills for a better quality of education, encouraging teachers to be leaders of implementation of new teaching approaches, finding a way of developing the sense of entrepreneurship and promoting students’ collaboration to make them feel connected, encouraging reflection and questioning experiences of real life, in order to prepare them for active life.
The project” Mini Entrepreneurs at School” initially involved 7 countries from the European countries:
Agrupamento de Escolas Albufeira Poente, Portugal,
Instituto di Istruzione Cesare Beccaria, Italy,
CIPFP Reina Victoria Eugenia, Spain (The Coordinator was informed by the Portuguese National Agency of the withdrawal of the Spanish partner)
Astrid Lindgren-Schule, Germany
Mersinbeleni Ilkokuku, Turkey
Colegiul Tehnic ” Anghel Saligny”, Romania
Roosi Kool, Estonia
The project served as a learning tool to acquire and develop new skills throughout the project accomplishing the following goals:
– improve the success of these youngsters, through strategies that may lead them to find perspectives of success; – innovate and improve the quality of teaching, through exploration/experience of new ideas;- develop project management and multicultural team work techniques, working in diverse cultural contexts and conditions;- improve skills of intercultural learning methodology and compare their skills of teaching with their colleagues from partner countries;- promote the sense of entrepreneurship between students ;- promote attitudes forward social success, lifelong learning and employability;- learn to be entrepreneurs;- identify interesting careers and the way of accessing to the world of work;- understand the relation between education and success in life;
– recognize the importance of staying at school.
This project’s design has been arranged very carefully to make the project full of learning opportunities for students, teachers, parents, administrators and local communities.
Collaborative work among participating schools in the project led to the distribution of work which implied a distribution of responsibilities according to the knowledge, qualifications and experiences of the partners.

During the first months of the implementation of the project, each partner researched and developed the areas they were responsible for. These areas are the ones necessary to create the mini- enterprises.
Every partner created a portfolio (in a digital support) with the tasks, the experiences made with their own students, pointing out the successes and the problems felt when implementing those tasks. Since the first moment that all the partners had in mind that the final goal was that students create mini-enterprises that can be viable. The partners presented their proposals, which were shared, in the etwinning platform, with the other partners, who also put them into practise in their own countries. That way, all participating schools were able to try new teaching strategies and to create new learning situations. At the end of the project an eBook was created with all this material. All the partners also cooperated in exchanging and developing teaching methods and materials, in creating output for a website „ mini -entrepreneurs.eu “ as a basis for a long-lasting communication and in enlarging the teaching techniques.
In the second part of the implementation of the project, each partner began working with their students in the creation of their own mini-enterprises, having in mind all the feedback shared by the other partners. This was the time of a deeper dissemination of the project in the schools, in the community, of selecting students for the teams and the beginning of the work of the teams of each school: preparation of an executive summary which contains the planning of the enterprise This summary was presented in a video.
No specific identity or product of culture can be superior or inferior to others. Students with special education needs also contributed towards the projects’ enrichment.
During the meetings the experiences of the teaching strategies were shared .Their implementation into practice were also discussed. Activities, Seminars improved knowledge that will last forever for all the participan

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 104080 Eur

Project Coordinator

Agrupamento de Escolas de Albufeira Poente & Country: PT

Project Partners

• Astrid Lindgren-Schule
• Mersinbeleni Ilkokulu
• CIPFP Reina Victoria Eugenia
• Colegiul Tehnic “Anghel Saligny”
• IIS ITCN2 BECCARIA
• Roosi Kool