Social Entrepreneurship Support Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social Entrepreneurship Support Europe

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

In recent years, multiple global crises (with food, finance, energy and climate) have heightened concerns about the social, environmental and developmental consequences of large corporations, banks and capital markets. These concerns have ignited interest in “alternative” production and consumption patterns and ways of conducting enterprise for the transition of the European economy. Moving out of the economic crisis is the immediate challenge that is facing Europe, but a perhaps greater challenge is to reverse key negative trends that preceded the crisis, such as rising inequalities, lack of social responsibility. Nowadays challenge is to enhance the employment capacity of the SE organizations. Embracing a more economic-oriented approach proved to be successful for the NGO sector in the last years. Thus, developing income-generating economic activities will improve the employment capacity of SE actors. The aim of the SES EU project was to foster the employability by upgrading and developing the competencies in the field of social entrepreneurship. The objectives of the project:
– Improving the entrepreneurial competences of human resources of social enterprises and people planning to run business in field of social economy,
– Increasing knowledge and skills in establishing and managing the social entrepreneurship entities,
– Delivery of tools to develop the entrepreneurial competence in the field of social economy,
– Identifying the best European practices in the field of social entrepreneurship,
– Increasing the awareness of benefits from the social entrepreneurship sector for society and economy.

The target groups of the project who benefit from the project products and took part in the projects’ activities are as follows:
1) direct target group: owners/managers of existing social enterprises, individuals interested in setting up social enterprise entities, partner organizations and their staff
2) indirect target group: VET organizations/institutions, training providers, trainers/lecturers of the target organizations, public and private labour actors

The project partnership was composed of 5 organizations coming from 5 EU countries representing different organizations and institutions. Some of the partners are the NGOs (social-economy entities) which support the other small NGOs by offering training, education, advice & guidance to these target groups. The project implementation was divided into various phases:
Phase (1): Management and Coordination; Phase (2): Development of the project outputs; Phase (3): Pilot testing of the project outputs and their fine-tuning; Phases 2&3 include the direct activities leading to the project outputs; Phase (4): Promotion, dissemination activities and Phase (5): Quality control, Monitoring and Evaluation.

Main project deliverables are as follow:
1) Decision-making simulation game / simulation social-economy enterprise – the ICT tool to improve the level of entrepreneurial skills, to foster the entrepreneurial attitudes and transversal skills of individuals interested in setting up social-economy enterprise or managers running social-economy enterprise, through exposure to business and real-life situation in the safety way; the simulation social-economy enterprise is used by trainers/lecturers in their courses in management of social-economy entities. The simulation company is accompanied by the User’s Guide – tool to facilitate a work with the simulation company, exploit all its possibilities to foster the entrepreneurial skills and attitudes.
2) ICT tool to facilitate and support strategic planning in social-economy enterprises based on realistic data and counteract the failures in their management. The tool helps to construct different scenarios for people who are planning to set up social economy enterprise, but also for existing entities, which could use this tool to analyze different scenarios for actions before making strategic decisions such as introducing a new product, investing or changing the activity profile change, etc. Reliable tool to test different scenarios of the activities can significantly reduce the business risk.
3) Programme Toolkit composed of: a) Training programme focused on development of entrepreneur’s competencies to start and run social-economy enterprise according to model 80:20 – 80 % of practice and 20% of theory (end-users: training providers, VET organisations and their trainers/lecturers); b) Training materials (handbook, workbook for student, manual for trainer/lecturer) – training materials/tools elaborated according to model 80:20 to provide trainings/lecturers to improve the level of entrepreneurial skills to start and run social-economy enterprise.

The project results are available in English, Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian and they are the part of the offers of the project partners.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 364743,22 Eur

Project Coordinator

Polska Fundacja Osrodkow Wspomagania Rozwoju Gospodarczego OIC POLAND z siedziba w Lublinie & Country: PL

Project Partners

• FONDAZIONE ISTUD PER LA CULTURA D’IMPRESA E DI GESTIONE
• UNIVERSIDADE DE AVEIRO
• G.G. EUROSUCCESS CONSULTING LIMITED
• CENTRUL PENTRU PROMOVAREA INVATARII PERMANENTE TIMISOARA ASOCIATIA