Project description

Project description

ENTREPRENEURSHIP – MORE THAN JUST ENTERPRISING

Background

Over the past ten years, entrepreneurship in school has become a field that involves an increasing number of people and organizations. Throughout the country, many successful initiatives have been launched in municipalities and regions. However, many have prospered for a few years, only to completely disappear once the money or the project time runs out, and meanwhile the school is requesting a more permanent solution.

Over the past six years in Östergötland, the non profit associations FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprise have co-developed a guideline for entrepreneurship in school. Young Enterprising was founded in Linköping in 1980, and has since then strived to increase positive attitudes towards enterprising in the upper secondary school. In the year 2002 a European project was launched, focusing on enterprising talents from pre-school up to upper-level of compulsory school. Today its activities are organized in a non-profit organization called FramtidsFrön, to which all of the county’s 13 municipalities and more than 60 schools are affiliated. Thanks to the co-operation of FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprising, Östergötland today enjoys a unique position in Sweden in regard to entrepreneurship in school, where pupils 6-20 years of age take an active part.

Entrepreneurship in school is not just a method to produce business owners. Entrepreneurship is chiefly about encouraging and developing entrepreneurial skills, such as creativity, inventiveness, and ability to co-operate, et cetera. Such skills are good for all individuals and the whole of society.

Sweden needs enterprising and creative individuals with strong self-esteem and an eye for possibilities for themselves and others. Enterprising people who realize their ideas is a prerequisite for the development of entrepreneurship and the founding of new businesses. If the entrepreneurial way of thinking is encouraged in school, the pupils’ enterprising skills are looked after and developed. This is helpful in preparing them for the changing, global world that awaits in adult life. In Sweden alone, 180 000 new business owners will be needed up until the year 2015, to take over businesses owned by people born in the forties.

Why this project?

Over the last few decades, society has changed more than ever, and the question is whether the school has kept up with this development and these changes. New knowledge will be required in the future labour market. We want to use the school in a better way to prepare children and youth for the demands of tomorrow.

Having worked with entrepreneurship in Östergötland for almost 30 years, we have realized that the way to reach the goal, which is to produce more business owners, is not to stimulate the enterprising in itself. A better way to reach the overall goal is to focus on school development by changing attitudes in teachers, and, even more importantly, recognizing and developing the inherent enterprising spirit in children and youth.

Our experience also tells us that many schools are not equipped with enough knowledge to change towards a more entrepreneurial attitude. In Östergötland we have worked with a wide range of turnkey models and tools aimed at teachers, to help them easily apply more entrepreneurial methods to their ordinary teaching. These tools are not to be seen as the solution to the school’s problems, but rather as a ”vitamin injection” to help open the teachers’ eyes to the entrepreneurial teaching methods. In the schools where these tools and models have gained a foothold, several teachers have gradually started working in a more entrepreneurial way in several subjects.

In order to influence and change the often rigid structures of school, we need to work on changing the school staff’s attitudes towards entrepreneurship and enterprising. This is done by tearing down old structures in the compulsory school and the upper secondary school. FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprise have taken different approaches to gain the teachers’ interest. Continuous education and inspiration has proved to be an essential way to gain an initial interest for the models and tools the organizations offer.

To sum up, FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprise have established the fact that the deciding factors for successful work with entrepreneurship in school are turnkey models and tools, together with efforts to change attitudes.

Project idea

FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprise, in co-operation with the County Administrative Board of Östergötland, want to do an exchange project together with other European countries, focusing on turnkey models and tools along with efforts to change attitudes. The purpose is to utilize the already existing concepts and methods to change attitudes that are being used in Europe instead of re-inventing the wheel.

Proposed goals for the project – models and tools

1 Surveying already existing turnkey models and tools in the different countries

2 Translating already existing models and tools

3 Development of new models and tools in areas lacking

4 Creating focus groups for the actual implementation

Proposed goals for the project – affecting attitudes

4 Surveying attitudes towards entrepreneurship in the school in participating countries, focusing on school staff

5 Doing a survey in the different countries on how conditions, such as rules and regulations, school plans, national aims et cetera, affect the possibility of working with entrepreneurship in the teaching

6 Exchange of school staff between the different countries to be able to work with the turnkey models and tools on location

7 Exchange on a municipal/regional/national level, of people who are able to influence prerequisites of working with entrepreneurship in school

8 Education and inspiration of key figures, such as school staff, politicians and local government officials et cetera

Financing

The project is financed through Interreg IV B or C, depending on what countries and organizations decide to join the project. EU countries from all of Europe, including Norway, are welcome to apply.

The EU program Interreg IV B will provide funds as follows;

1 Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, 85%

2 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, eligible regions in Germany, 75%

3 Norway 50% from a separate budget

4 Eligible regions in Russia and Belarus, 90 % (ENPI)

The EU program Interreg IV C will provide funds as follows;

5 Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK, up to 75%

6 Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, up to 85%

7 Norway and Switzerland, up to 50% from a separate budget.

About The County Administrative Board, FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprise in Östergötland

The County Administrative Board of Östergötland will be the leading partner of the project witch co-partners FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprise Sweden. The County Administrative Board of Östergötland has worked strategically with supporting and promoting young entrepreneurship for many years. The latest action in the area is a three year project which started in may 2006 aimed at educating school staff in entrepreneurship in the municipality of Mjölby. This project was as well a collaboration with FramtidsFrön and Young Enterprise.

www.e.lst.se

FramtidsFrön is a non-profit-organization that inspires students, pedagogies and other school staff to develop and use their entrepreneurial skills. We work with students from pre-school up to upper-level of compulsory school. At the moment we offer four unique programs. In the early years, the focus is set on developing the inherent entrepreneurial skills. In the later years, FramtidsFrön programs focus on real enterprising skills, economics, and how to run a company etc.

www.framtidsfron.se

Young Enterprise gives young people aged 16-20 knowledge about, and understanding of, the conditions and possibilities of enterprising. Over an academic year the young people, supported by teachers and advisors from trade and industry, run a small-company from inception to winding-up. The students decide on the business concept themselves and get venture capital to finance the activity at the start. After forming the company and deciding which positions to have within it, the students start to produce or purchase, market, sell, accounting etc.