Youth Entrepreneurship Support

The Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan defines entrepreneurship as “an individual’s ability to turn ideas into action”. There are five key competences that can enable someone to do this: creativity, innovation, critical thinking, initiative and risk-taking. But every would-be entrepreneur in Europe faces a tough environment, the first component of which is that most education systems do not offer the right foundation for an entrepreneurial career. In some territories, young people finish their studies without ever learning anything about creating a business or taking the initiative in their life, so it is not surprising that as young adults, they are not aware of the opportunities available to them to implement their ideas. Flash surveys show that self-employment is becoming less attractive and does not even cross the mind of more than half of the citizens. Meanwhile, youth unemployment rates are particularly high across Europe (25.1% in the Northern Great Plain, Hungary and 18.7% in the Nord-Vest, Romania – Eurostat, 2015). The project’s main overall objective is a higher employment rate in the Romanian-Hungarian border area by supporting self-employment. The partners would like to work on ensuring that being an entrepreneur is an attractive prospect for Romanian and Hungarian youth. They will provide an online curriculum and learning opportunities based on the target group’s needs to help them develop and nurture the necessary competences for self-employment (and any kind of employment, as a matter of fact). By involving stakeholders in the local economy, they will guarantee constructive feedback and networking opportunities between the supply and demand side of the labor market. As a result, they expect young people to ‘leave’ the project more confidently and with plans for their future, armed with not only ideas but also the knowledge and tools they will need to realize them. To ensure the initiative’s sustainability, they will recruit teachers (and schools) from the programme area, and train them to become effective advocates of entrepreneurship. Based on the above, the main target groups (beside the general public) are the following:- students in their last two years of secondary education who are close to leaving school and join the labor market,- teachers in the territory who can help carrying on the initiative after the project ends,- education institutions (through their students and teachers) that can implement the initiative as a potential good practice.The activities contribute to both the output and result indicator of the programme: they plan to involve at least 100 students during the trainings, and by promoting self-employment, they motivate young people to start a creative business venture instead of facing unemployment, for example. The partners implement an approach with two main pillars:1. The first pillar is laying the foundations by a detailed review of the core challenge, its main causes and possible solutions, supported by interviews with relevant actors in the topic. Based on the accumulated data, specific educational tools (online competency test, learning platform and curriculum, training camp, practical guide for teachers) will be developed, using the latest, most innovative teaching techniques.2. The second pillar serves as a testing phase for the developed tools through an e-learning course and training events organised on both sides of the border, but it also involves the preparation of future initiatives and the design of policy proposals.Relying on transnational cooperation is justified since the problem addressed by the project is not limited to cities, regions or even countries: in different ways, all European nations are affected by it, so cooperating in the matter of practical solutions can be more effective due to shared knowledge and experience. Cross-border efforts have other benefits, too: the results will be more visible and reach a bigger audience, meanwhile the country-specific, diverse circumstances ‘force’ the partners to develop and implement the project in a flexible way. Both of these are closely linked with sustainability since they can prompt similar initiatives to pop up in other countries or regions and make the project widely applicable. Through the creation of an integrated development strategy, the partners provide a basis for future targeted actions aiming for the improvement of the labor market. Thanks to the online competency test, they will get a sense of the target group’s skills and knowledge on the topic and can tailor the curriculum to suit their needs. They will also provide methodological guidance to help the participating teachers learn the tools of effective entrepreneurship training. The qualitative testing of the curriculum will be carried out during an online course and 3-day (24-hour) intensive simulation-based training sessions, where Romanian and Hungarian students can learn in their native language and also in mixed English-speaking groups – in the presence of the teachers who will receive the practical part of their methodology training in this setting. The end product of these trainings will be the business plans of the fictitious micro organisations which will compete with each other during the last part of the training where real actors of the labor market will serve as the jury, thus mentoring the participating pupils. For follow-up and dissemination purposes, there will be a conference at the end of the project for the participants and all interested parties. With the broad dissemination of these outputs (the strategy, competency test, online platform and curriculum, training script, guide, trainings, business plans, conference and final report), the partners wish to ensure the widest application of the project, which hopefully will generate further interest and can be seen as a pilot action. To ensure sustainability, the competency test and the curriculum will be made available on the online platform for free after the project, and the practical guide will contain a one-day version of the training camp to make its later implementation easier for schools and teachers (e.g. they can use it on their – in some cases – mandatory carrier guidance day). The project’s innovative nature is present in several ways:- the partners focus on one of the earliest risk factors of unemployment: the lack of necessary skills, which is at the root of the problem and its solution could affect the way countries normally have to manage the labor market;- during the development of the curricula, they take advantage of the latest, most innovative teaching techniques and tools, which enables them to incorporate digital competences into the curriculum;- and using a training format which is rarely utilized in the territory, they acclimatize a good practice to local needs.

Achieved: The project raised the employment rate in the Romanian-Hungarian border area by supporting self-employment. At the end of this project, 102 young students learned how to develop a creative business and become a strategic entrepreneurs. Finalized : 1) 1 cross-border strategy which includes a baseline report about the four counties of the project area and an Integrated development strategy; 2) Development of joint training methodology with : 1 Online competency test with creative tasks for the students, giving an automatic response for every person; ; 1 E-learning platform; 1 E-curriculum; 1 Bootcamp script and 1 practical guide to entrepreneurship training; 3) 5 Project videos, 1 Website to promote the projects activities and last but not least 3 social media accounts were created (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube) through which will be disseminate only information directly concerning the project. 4) To involve teachers and schools, 1 Caravan was organized by LB, with an expert speakers on entrepreneurship – visiting 6 cities in the four counties (and more than 8 high schools); 5) 2-day Cross-border teacher workshop was organized for 15 teachers in Romania so they could learn about the current and most effective tools and methods of entrepreneurship education; 6) Joint delivery (joint entrepreneurship training) which containes : 100 Online competency assessments for 100 students, 3 bootcamps meaning online simulation-based intensive training camps ( 1 in RO and 2 in HU).

The three main results are directly linked to the three specific objectives the project will be working towards: 1. Students with highly developed entrepreneurial competencies and further learning potential who are able to successfully enter the labor market and perform well. 2. Due to the widely disseminated high-quality online and offline curriculum, the number of people who have better entrepreneurial competencies can grow in the border region. 3. Teachers who are effective advocates of entrepreneurship and schools/educational institutions more aware of the importance of entrepreneurship education – and ready to do something about it. As previously stated, youth unemployment is usually tied together with few job opportunities in the area and/or the lack of employable skills. Young people however, who have the necessary vision to take advantage of the market gaps and an entrepreneurial mindset (including attributes that are also useful for finding a job in general – like creativity, innovation, critical thinking, initiative and risk-taking), can either become self-employed by creating a start-up business (and by doing this, creating even more potential jobs) or can find a satisfying job thanks to their acquired skills. Both outcomes are raising the employment rate in the eligible area. By reaching out to schools and teachers and giving them the materials required for a successful entrepreneurship education program, new generation of students can have access to the same opportunities. The target value of the result indicator of the programme is a 56.51% employment rate (instead of the 56.31% in 2012. This project can have a galvanizing effect to reaching this number until 2023.