Trades, professions and traditional jobs in risk of disappearance in Europe as the inspiration for new businesses’ creation Erasmus Project

Project Title

Trades, professions and traditional jobs in risk of disappearance in Europe as the inspiration for new businesses’ creation

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 youth

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; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The idea of the project: “The disappearing professions in Europe as the inspiration to create new business ventures” within the International Youth Initiatives was born in the Youth Entrepreneurship Club (www.yec.org.pl), run in Warsaw by the Ad Meritum Foundation.
The idea for the project was to create a catalogue of professions at risk of disappearance in Europe, in the form of photographs, films and interviews with artists/craftsmen, placed on an electronic online platform; the idea was to select professions that have the potential to transform into new business in order to develop new business ideas for them.
Young people from YEC have established contacts with youth leaders from different organisations in Europe, have determined the project tasks and tasks of individual leaders in different countries, and have obtained the consent of the legal representatives of partner organisations for the participation of leaders in the project.
As a result, 5 partners: from PL, LV, PT, IT and FR submitted a joint project.

Why did we want to implement this project together, as youth leaders?
– We were looking for inspiration for entrepreneurial activities that will help us in the future to set up our own companies or realise our professional passions, we believed that we can find such inspiration in saving the vanishing professions by looking for opportunities to transform them into business activities;
– We wanted to master digital competences well, because we believe that they are very important and necessary for our future occupations and functioning in society; we wanted to obtain appropriate ICT skills and competences on a high professional level;
– We wanted to establish contacts between youth leaders from other countries in order to learn from each other and work together and for our local communities;
– We needed to learn foreign languages well, especially English, so that language is not an obstacle to our future work,
– For many of the young people we included in the project, such a project was supposed to be an opportunity to improve their school performance or to detach them from negative behaviour and practices;
– We wanted to open up to European cooperation and the idea of active European citizenship, promoting diversity, intercultural dialogue, especially in times of difficulty for the unity of an open and secure Europe;
– We were interested in peer-to-peer and intergenerational education; we thought we could learn a lot from each other;
– Some of us wanted to enter into vocational training for youth workers.

The target group of this project was young people aged 15-25 years, as youth leaders from our organisations, we aimed the project activities at this age group, we engaged young people from our schools and organisations to visit the representatives of disappearing professions together to do interviews, short films about them and photographic documentation.

When submitting the application, it seemed to us that the project may also be important for the representatives of the disappearing professions themselves, that they may find inspiration to develop the company, even perhaps in cooperation with us. For many of them the obstacle is the lack of ICT skills and the lack of knowledge of languages to develop through e.g. internet shops or participation in some international events.
The results of the project:
– An interactive electronic catalogue has been created, available on the project website: www.bolderasmus.eu, containing documentation of 20 disappearing professions in Europe, in the form of descriptions, interviews with professionals, photos and videos. The catalogue has been structured according to countries and professions, and the presentation of one profession has the same scheme: description, video interview with a representative of a vanishing profession and showing it at work, photographic documentation of the profession; the language of the catalogue is English, but in the case of video interviews, these are interviews in the original languages, with subtitles in English.
– There are business plans for 8 disappearing professions, about possible transfer of these professions to business activities. The business plans were published in a separate section on the project website.
– Mentors of leaders, together with the participation of leaders, developed guidelines for teachers and educators working with young people how to incorporate the project results into educational programmes in the field of entrepreneurship – the so-called “Vademecum”, which was posted on the project website, distributed in a newsletter to institutions working with young people, and disseminated through a webinar for educators of young people on the project results.
All project result has been published on the Erasmus+ results platform.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 97475 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fundacja Ad Meritum & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Livanu novada Multifunkcionalais jaunatnes iniciativu centrs “Kvartals”
• CREF – Centro de Recursos Educativos e Formação
• I.T.E.S. “A. Fraccacreta”
• Digijeunes