Projektu YouBrand – Storytelling and Pitching for Start-ups (YouBrand)
Date: 31 December 2017 do 30 Decemebr 2019

ERASMUS+ Adult education
Cooperation for innovation and good practices
Strategic Partnerships for Adult Education
2. Strategic Partnerships for Innovation

Since 2016 entrepreneurship has been defined as one of 8 key competences by EP (18.12.2006) in lifelong learning process school education faced a lot of pressure and changes in terms of teaching programme in entrepreneurship within basic education programme. All national activities were mainly focused on development suitable training material, supporting tools for teachers in secondary, high VET schools as well as universities. A lot of activities were preformed at national and international level (also in EU project) – like online games, online trainings etc. to enhance entrepreneurial spirit of youngsters.
What is missing now is a new approach to adult and their entrepreneurship skills.
Adult learners represent group of unemployed, excluded groups, often with not very good educational background. Even if they are ready to run their own business they do not have as good ICT, social skills as younger EU citizens. The YouBrand project will support the above-mentioned priorities:

• defining and testing an innovative training model/curriculum for the development by disadvantaged people (unemployed- NEETs, at risk of social exclusion) of the following key competences: initiative and entrepreneurship, digital skills and creativity.
• defining and testing a train-the-trainers path aimed at introduce an innovative digital and web-based training model for the support of young aspiring entrepreneurs in their start-up paths.
• designing and implementing an online community for trainers aimed at sharing and implementing resources and information.

The YouBrand project directly responds to EU policy documents and programmes fostering:

• entrepreneurship and start-up as a means to reduce unemployment and increase the EU competitiveness
• the improvement of entrepreneurial education
• the development of ITC competences.

Following a consolidated process for development and transfer of innovation, the project will essentially do 4 things:

1. define an innovative business start-up support curriculum for adult learners merging in a single learning process a set of competencies as best practices coming from 5 EU countries.
2. define and run train-the-trainers programs on the delivery of the business start-up support curriculum.
3. pilot and fine-tune the business start-up support curriculum for adult learners in 5 countries.
4. implement an web community platform as a reference point for trainers active in entrepreneurship and business start-up training to share resources, follow-up projects and discussions.
5. The key elements of the training programs (both for aspiring entrepreneurs and for trainers) will be:
   Employability skills
   Business Model Canvas for a start up: new strategies to identify the value proposition
   Digital Storytelling for personal branding
   Digital Corporate storytelling
   Pitching: entrepreneurship projects presentation strategies and techniques
   Fundraising/Crowdfunding new strategies and sources for fundraising: new funding strategies and sources

Start-up businesses and SMEs (EC on Eurostat data ’14) the main source of employment. The Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020 underlines that in order to foster Europe growth, employment and competitiveness there is a need of “more entrepreneurs an start-ups”. The Council invites the Member States to “provide more services to support business start-up and promote the opportunities and perspectives of self-employment”.
The Action Plan 2020 and the Small Business Act strongly focus on the need to promote entrepreneurship spirit and business culture, supporting the business creation, training and raising new generations of entrepreneurs. The Council suggests to the Member States to “encourage schools, VET providers and employment services to actively promote entrepreneurship providing guidance, support on entrepreneurship and self-employment also through entrepreneurship training courses”. The Eurydice survey (2014) “Entrepreneurial education” highlighted the following gaps in terms of competences, skills and knowledge: communication, presentation, planning, definition and creation of a business plan and idea.
In 2013, European Commission (EC) Memo stated that ‘Entrepreneurship education needs to be boosted’. The communication then comments that, ‘Investing in education for entrepreneurship is one of the highest return investments policy-makers in Europe can make to support economic growth and business creation’. Quoting again from the EC, education should be brought to life through practical experiential learning models, real-world experience and the participation of entrepreneurs. Defined entrepreneurial learning outcomes for all educators are needed, to introduce effective entrepreneurial learning methodologies into the classroom. In the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan that was adopted on January 9 of this year the Commission invited Member States to ensure that the key competence “entrepreneurship” is embedded into curricula across primary, secondary, vocational, higher and adult education before the end of 2015.

The YouBrand project aims to design, test and spread the utilisation of an innovative training methodology/curriculum with the objective of supporting aspiring adult entrepreneurs in their start-up path. To do so the project will merge in a single model the following contents. To develop and test this curriculum the project will update the competences of trainers through a train-the-trainers path providing them skills and resources developed by a partnership involving education, research and innovation activities.
The delivery of ICT competencies will be strongly embedded in the training promoting the use of ICT to increase the efficacy and impact of training paths for entrepreneurship and start-up.
This curriculum will thus support the development of key following key competences:

• digital skills
• initiative and entrepreneurship
• creativity

The project will implement an web community platform as a reference point for trainers active in entrepreneurship and business start-up training to share resources, follow-up projects and discussions.