There are numerous measures taken to cut down unemployment. One of them is promoting entrepreneurship through education on many levels in schools, institutes, polytechnics, universities, adn adult training institutes. EU has this integrated entrepreneurship with the European Ministries of Education into the Educational Curriculum (Finnish Ministry of Education: Guidelines for Entrepreneur Education, 2009) to be applied in schools and vocational institutes, but also other organizations have set up projects and programs to advocate entrepreneurship. Teachers play a key role in advocating entrepreneurship and teaching its basic elements.
This blog post is a summary of the core elements of educating an entrepreneurial mindset, as presented in the European Training Foundation (ETF) conference on Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial learning, held in Brussels in November 2012. During the conference, 12 different projects were presented from countries all around the world.
Certain projects, such as Hatchupsut Women's business development centre and incubator for capacity building in Egypt, Incubation for women entrepreneurs in France and in entrepreneurship by storytelling in Sweden are aimed at women's employment through entrepreneurship. The goal of vocational education is to train young people for employment, so these ideas could be taken to school. The women are in a very different positions in these countries. In Egypt most women stay at home, taking care of the household and family and are rarely seen outside, and hardly ever as workers. The project aims to provide earning opportunities especially for lower- and middle class women, so the female teachers are in key position of changing the thinking that only men should work. However, this is a long process. The core success factors in this project in Egypt is the holistic nature, taking into consideration a broad spectrum of conditions, and international partnership. Egypt is a poor country and cannot facilitate costly projects without outside assistance, especially after the past years' events. In Sweden, the core elements of the entrepreneurship rely on volunteer base for operation, allowing low costs, wide international application, as well as pioneering pedagogic approach. Vocational institutes could provide information about the third sector, and the volunteer and paid positions needed. A lot of experts and skilled workers are needed, for example in development projects, such as drilling wells, in environmental field and in village development (nurses etc.) In all these three countries, partnership was crucial, so that may parties are included from private and public sector, several local organizations in the community and making the project widely known. InnoOmnia is a great example of how this factor has been used successfully.
In several projects, such as Increasing self-employment and empowerment in Tajikistan and Practical Market Reseach in Serbia, one of the key factors was training. In has to be provided on-site, so that it will be accessible for attendees. Training may be provided virtually or with other ICT tools. This can be directly implemented into teaching and education, if IT tools can be provided.
In InnoOmnia Espoo, which is very familiar for all of us, one of the key success factors towards entrepreneurship was the inclusion and bringing together an entrepreneurial community, also mentioned in the France project for women, meaning that the students, teachers, and entrepreneurs all collaborate, exchange ideas and thoughts and work together. When help is near and you can just pull an entrepreneur from the sleeve, it is much easier to approach the expert compared to when, for example, you need to make a phone call or set up an appointment to find out answers.
Several projects have multiplied and spread to several countries, (e.g. Swedish storytelling project has spread to 20 other EU countries) which is another core factor so that others may learn and adopt ideas and practices that have proven to work. The result is networking, which is another important factor in entrepreneurship, and which can be implemented in a vocational school like InnoOmnia as done with Lunch Beats and through the learning community.
Recognition is another core factor. This means that several stakeholders and key parties acknowledge the value of the project and efforts. This is linked with partnership: when you find suitable partners and establish a good cooperation, they will spread the word, and further, this helps with multiplication, so these factors are interconnected. This is more difficult to teach in schools, but the key here is teaching the students to network and maintain relationships where ever they go, introducing themselves as future specialists in their own field of expertise. Teachers can be a great example with this. Personally I have learned to do this in adult education. We had practice "cocktail parties" with other students, where we introduced ourselves with a pre-written, 2-minute "cocktail speech" about who we are, what is our expertise and specialty, where I am especially good at, and what I love to do.
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