ABOUT THE PROJECT
Project title: “Creativity and innovation in adult education for development of entrepreneurial mind-set of citizens with fewer opportunities”
Project partners are:
- Youth Power Germany e.V.
- Centre for Non-formal education and Lifelong learning (CNELL), Serbia
- Ung Kraft / Youth Power Sweden
- Association for improvement of modern living skills “Realization”, Croatia
- DOMAS – training, consultation and business services, Croatia
- Company for professional rehabilitation and employment of persons with disabilities ITECCION, Serbia
SUMMARY:
Long-term unemployment is for citizens often very difficult to deal with and manifests in through various issues ranging from psychological to financial. Different levels of policy levels – European, national and regional reported that there are no more reliable paths of going through education and training that leads the way to quality employment. Formal education is many times failing at developing the skills necessary for employment and especially entrepreneurship. The results of the PISA assessments which are conducted around the OECD countries show that one in five students do not develop the basic level of skills during their formal education which would enable them to actively participate in society (OECD, 2013).
Self-employment and entrepreneurship has turned out to be a valuable option for careers’ building. Entrepreneurship competence as one of the key competences is described as transversal and applies to all spheres of life and therefore impacts much wider than business and economy.
Unemployed citizens in our communities are the beneficiaries of our activities and their needs are directly influencing our needs, needs of partner organisations. Thus, after doing a short survey among beneficiaries, all partners agreed that they need to improve their adult education NFE activities with quality Entrepreneurial Learning (EL), in order to provide quality, attractive and effective activities for personal and professional development of citizens with fewer opportunities in their communities.
This project will meet those needs and will provide more opportunities of networking and exchange among partners in organising and promoting entrepreneurial intelligence and entrepreneurship competences of citizens and we are producing outputs that will serve as a quality knowledge management material for education of current and future adult educators for efficient and effective empowerment and mentoring of unemployed citizens for entrepreneurial mind-set development.
Despite the fact that entrepreneurship is highly on agenda in EU’s policy documents, many entrepreneurship programmes in regular and adult formal education systems keep their focus on developing business skills. It opens a question how can one become creative thinker or develop sense of initiative in an environment as ours (schools, society, culture) that still generally is based on passing on convergent information (one solution, one correct answer) and where mistakes are not welcomed.
The proposal will enhance the existing adult education training models and curricula for entrepreneurship with the elements of creativity and entrepreneurial mind-set development. The project is designed to create a quality – innovative training model for entrepreneurship adult education, covering the existing need for modernisation of Entrepreneurial Learning, as well as the needed innovative and creative learning tools to support a quality adult education.
The project aims to reduce the disparity in learning outcomes between different groups of learners (citizens with fewer opportunities and other citizens). This will be done by promoting more employment opportunities for citizens with fewer opportunities and supporting them to become entrepreneurs. The project has an approach of inclusion of people with fewer opportunities, as it is directly linked with empowerment of people with fewer opportunities such as with different marginalised citizens, citizens that come from migrant or refugee backgrounds, people with different backgrounds and facing social obstacles. Raising the capacities of the organisations to provide inclusive programs for entrepreneurship will ensure participation of this target groups in the citizens’ activities provided by the partner organisations.
Therefore, objectives of the project are:
- Empower unemployed citizens (with lower basic skills for entrepreneurship) in entrepreneurial intelligence and mind-set development (including intrapersonal and interpersonal social-emotional and creativity competences)
- Empower our adult educators and improve knowledge management of adult education institutions and organisations in theory and practice for building competences of adult educators in entrepreneurial mind-set and creativity in entrepreneurship development of citizens
- Exchange good practices and further develop quality strategic partnership among partners from 4 European countries with different realities in regards to citizens’ self-employment and entrepreneurship
Project activities are:
- A1 Project Management
- M1 Kick-off meeting
- O1 Handbook “Entrepreneurial Mind-set development within adult education”
- M2 Second meeting
- O2 Guidebook with Curriculum “Using creative methods for development of innovation and creativity skills for entrepreneurship of adults with low basic skills”
- M3 Third meeting
- O3 E-learning course “Entrepreneurial mind-set development for adults with low basic skills”
- M4 Fourth meeting
- O4 Toolkit “Adventure room methodology in adult education for entrepreneurship”
- M5 Fifth meeting
- C1 LTTA “Training of trainers for adult education for creativity in entrepreneurship of citizens with fewer opportunities”
- E1, E2, E3, E4 – Open conferences in RS, SE, HR, DE
- M6 – Evaluation meeting