Senior Social Entrepreneurship Erasmus Project

Project Title

Senior Social 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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

The population in the European Union is ageing. The proportion of people over age 55 is expected to be approximately 37 % by 2030. The impact on the labour force is reinforced by the ageing of the “baby boom generation”, which is now moving into retirement. This growing population of healthy older people has the skills, financial resources and time available to contribute to economic activity through extending their working lives, including through entrepreneurship. As many seniors have already had successful professional lives, there is often a desire to give back to society and to be useful.

The promotion of entrepreneurship among older age segments is a prospective educational option to prolong the working lives of older people, reduce older-age unemployment and enhance the social inclusion of older individuals. Engaging in social entrepreneurship through economic activity while pursuing a social aim and generating self-financing offers is an ideal way for active ageing and for participation in the society.

This approach coincided with the Europe 2020 Strategy which put a very clear development path for transferring Europe into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, and for social cohesion; and proposed the development of the social economy sector. Social enterprises offer a model for a 21st century business that balances financial, social, cultural and environmental needs. Social entrepreneurs are agents of change and passionate about improving the lives of people and communities.

However, seniors often need some training on how to start up a business. Despite their broad range of professional experience and knowledge that they have acquired in their professional life, they may not have experience in starting up a company. While there are many training needs that are common between young and senior entrepreneurs, the latter also have unique learning styles, background knowledge and expertise which justify a new and innovative approach to increase social entrepreneurship by older people.

The overall objective of our project has been to raise the awareness of the benefits of social entrepreneurship for older people, especially for women since the current participation rate for women is nearly half that of men.

To this end, the specific aims have been:
• to develop a Senior Social Entrepreneurship Interactive e-Training Course, which has been designed to fill knowledge gaps on entrepreneurship skills for those who have spent their working life as employees (ttps://training.seniorsocial.eu/modules/);
• to provide a Practice Guide with a collection of best practice examples on how to establish, run and manage a social enterprise, as well as case studies with practical trouble-shooting examples (https://seniorsocialentrepreneurs.eu/);
• to develop a Senior Social Entrepreneurship e-Platform: It will support the delivery of all online tools of the project and also online interactive tools such as forum and social networking applications. It will promote the use of real-time translation and break down the language barrier between users from different countries (https://training.seniorsocial.eu/);
• to adapt selected online materials from the e-Training Course and Guidelines and develop integrated native apps for smartphones and mobile devices (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gr.gunet.seniorsocial).

The target groups for our project were adult education providers, labour market advisers and human resource organisations. The final beneficiaries were seniors who were motivated to give back to society and to be useful as social entrepreneurs or as mentors for other social enterprises.

The project fitted into the common underlying strategy of the partners insofar as the development of social entrepreneurship materials was in line with their overall research or educational activities and programmes. The transnational cooperation of partners, the majority of them working in social research and/or as vocational training providers, enriched the quality of the results and rendered them immediately applicable for exploitation.

The immediate impact, already during the validation phase, has been the transfer of knowledge and skills to approx. 100 senior citizens who were interested to enter the path to social entrepreneurship and to approx. 150 experts and key actors. They have been working with approx. 20,000 clients (job searchers, adult education learners, etc.) each year. After having been involved in the pilot tests, they were able to implement the project’s concept into their regular counselling activities. In the countries of the partnership alone, more than 45.000 persons working as labour office advisers or in similar professions were informed through the guidelines and online platform in their native languages.

Project Website

http://seniorsocial.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 160374 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE MALAGA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Zavod GEA, zavod za psihosocialno svetovanja in socialne inovacije
• TURUN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• QUALED obcianske zdruzenie pre kvalifikáciu a vzdelávanje
• USE – Universidade Sénior de Évora – Associação de aprendizagem ao Longo da vida
• Greek Universities Network
• Wissenschaftsinitiative Niederösterreich (WIN)