In the beginning, each of the players randomly selects a business card. The business cards are grouped into three sectors: hospitality, services, and the food industry. Each business has some features listed on its respective card: the yearly revenue made, the risks it is prompted to, and how much a cost unit is. Throughout the game, the players will roll the dice and advance on the board. Similar to other popular games, they will either cash in or cash out some of their money, depending on the box they find themselves in. Otherwise, they will need to draw a card:

• knowledge cards will test the players’ knowledge related to entrepreneurship, economics, or business administration,
• surprise cards will affect the player only if their business is prompted to such a risk, as the one listed on their card,
• development cards test the participants’ entrepreneurial abilities and add more interactivity to the game.

Because we aim to promote a healthy mindset, we introduced also the happiness points, one would receive after answering successfully a question on a knowledge card. The happiness points have a specific role in the game and are associated with several benefits the individual can enjoy in life. 

The game can be played individually, or in pairs, with a maximum of 12 people, with a duration of 90-120 minutes. A facilitator is needed to support the participants’ learning process and ensure the rules are respected. 

Future Entrepreneur is an open-source game, that one can print out and use for non-profit, educational purposes: in the classroom, in the training room, or in other circumstances. The kit contains also printing instructions. The game is available in 5 languages: English, German, Italian, Romanian, and Spanish. 

You can access it for free, here. 

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The board game is a result produced within the “ENTREPRENEUR+: EXPLORING ENTREPRENEURSHIP BEYOND CONCEPTS” project, conducted by Centrul de Voluntariat Cluj-Napoca, in partnership with Associazione di Promozione Sociale Joint, Backslash and Gemeinsam Leben und Lernen in Europa e.V. and co-financed by the European Commission’s Erasmus + Program.

The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the uthors, and the National Agency and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.”

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Transnational Project Meeting in Brussels

On April 3rd-4th, 2023 the consortium met in Brussels to hold the Transnational Project Meeting, organised by Ecepaa.

On the first working day, the participants have been discussing the project results:

• YOUCAN Best Practices Publication: to identify best practices coming from projects that have focused on the importance of cross-sectoral cooperation to address youth with migrant dropout from school.
• YOUCAN Toolkit: the toolkit will train members of the participating organisations in increasing the quality in the preparation, implementation, monitoring and follow-up of EU/international projects and increased capacity and professionalism to work at EU/international level by better knowing the project cycle management.

Moreover, they have been discussed the results and evaluated the last O2O “Organisation to Organisation” training, while preparing the next one that will be happening in May in Spain, hosted by Camara de Cáceres.

On the second working day, the participants have visited:

• The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Brussels: The Belgian-Italian Chamber of Commerce is a non-profit association founded in 1950 to foster contacts between Belgium and Italy. It is located in the center of Brussels near the European Institutions. The Belgian-Italian Chamber of Commerce is the point of reference par excellence for any company willing to promote its own business and widen its network in Italy and in Belgium. The Chamber indeed offers a wide range of promotional services, assistance and consultancy, which represents an advantage for its members.

• The Parlamentarium: is the visitors’ centre of the European Parliament and is located in the Parliament’s Espace Léopold complex in Brussels. The permanent exhibition contains hundreds of multimedia components, explaining the European Parliament and other European Union institutions.

Other than that, it has been also the occasion to discuss the details of the Multiplier Event that will be hosted by the 2nd Vocational School of Katerini in Greece at the end of June 2023.

To know more about the YOUCAN project, see these additional information.

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partners of the project

• Associazione di promozione sociale Joint (Italy)
• AMECE (Italy)
• 2nd Vocational School of Katerini (Greece)
• AidLearn (Portugal)
• Ecepaa (Belgium)
• Caceres Chamber of Commerce (Spain)

L'articolo YOUCAN | Transnational Project Meeting in Brussels proviene da Youth Networks.

The consortium of the YOUCAN project is formed by the following partners:

• Associazione di promozione sociale Joint (Italy)
• AMECE (Italy)
• 2nd Vocational School of Katerini (Greece)
• AidLean (Portugal)
• Ecepaa (Belgium)
• Caceres Chamber of Commerce (Spain)

YOUCAN (Youth with migrant drop-out tackling: capacity building) is a KA2 Erasmus project co-funded by the European Union, and its aim is to contribute to triggering the modernisation and to reinforcing the response of education, training systems and youth policies considering the main challenges provided by the migrant youth school drop-out and social exclusion, by building the capacity of the consortium to work transnationally and with a cross-sector approach.

To achieve that, it introduces some innovative features such as:

• the objective of making the consortium apply to fundings other than European ones;
• the diversity represented by the participating organisations/entities, coming from and acting in different fields such as youth, economics, policies, migrants – thus being cross-sectorial.

2nd Transnational Partner Meeting

The 2nd Transnational Partner Meeting has happened in Milan (Italy) in October 2022. The association in charge of the event’s organisation and management was Associazione di promozione sociale Joint.

On the first day of the event, the consortium has been reviewing the work done so far, discussing the results achieved, and the further steps to be taken, hosted in the headquarter of Associazione Joint in Milan.

On the second day, the partners had the chance to visit different local realities that deal with migrants, refugees and young people with a migrant background.

CivicoZero Milano

The partners met with CivicoZero Milano, that presented the activities they carry out with unaccompanied foreign minors, as for example giving them legal support, language training, and an overall help with practical issues, to encourage social integration and provide a safe space for them to flourish.

The social cooperative CivicoZero was established in 2011 in continuity with activities carried out since 2008 with a Save the Children Italy project. It activates individualised pathways aimed at real social inclusion, through pedagogical, legal and psychological assistance for all young people who are socially marginalised, deviant and at risk of exploitation.

The cooperative, through its consolidated network of stakeholders and territorial network, represents a reality in close connection and collaboration with all the public and private actors that make up the reception and integration system, and works constantly to contribute to the improvement of the taking in charge and the construction of integration and autonomy paths for young people.

Cooperativa Sociale Tempo per L’Infanzia

The participants have been also visiting and learning from Cooperativa sociale Tempo per l’infanzia, a cooperative that carries out activities to prevent social hardship and early-school leaving, to implement support and guidance skills for young people in a complex society.

The Cooperative Tempo per l’Infanzia is a recognised reality in the area and is well established in its services of promoting the well-being of minors, supporting parenting, training for social workers and teachers, and environmental education. The Cooperative’s activities are aimed at preventing social discomfort and school drop-out, at implementing the support and orientation skills of children in a complex society, at stimulating the potential of reference adults, the creativity and resources of the entire educational context (family-school-territory), at refining the listening and response methods of the environment to the needs of the younger generations, at disseminating forms of active citizenship, and at social and environmental sustainability.

Migrantour

Next step was Migrantour, a European network of migrant driven intercultural routes to understand cultural diversity, to foster the integration of citizens of foreign origin in the involved cities by promoting mutual understanding and respect.

The cities of the Migrantour network offer intercultural urban walks designed and led by citizens of migrant origin. A zero-mile responsible tourism experience to better understand the role of migration in the transformation of European societies. An invitation to travel, meet and reflect on the value of diversity and dialogue.

The partners have been thus visiting Via Padova in Milan, which is part of the Migrantour project, thanks to its intercultural richness.

To know more about the YOUCAN project, see these additional information.

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Soft skills are becoming a necessity in today’s workforce. With the growth of emerging digital companies and the increased competition in the global job market, employees need to be well-rounded and have strong soft skills.

This article will explore the ESSENCE project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme, which aims to increase the employability of university students and its graduates through the development of soft skills.

Nowadays, it is crucial to match both technical knowledge and soft and intangible skills. To meet the demands of employers and recruiters connected with the most desirable competencies, the demand-driven employers’ perspective guided the structure of the courses.

GOALS – The Importance of Intangible Qualities

According to the research published by the World Economic Forum in 2016, in the era of digital automation and AI, career success factors are facing significant changes in all industries as time passes (especially in those with high technological coefficients). 

Nowadays, strategic competitiveness depends more and more on intellectual capital assets: the fourth industrial revolution– where new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) dominate the world- hence the need to create new managerial talents that are also highly empowered on both technical knowledge and soft and intangible abilities. 

ESSENCE project’s aim is to create a complete set of new soft abilities on the students and fresh graduates to enhance their educational and labour market competency.

In order to achieve this result, during the project partners developed training, courses, educational modules, content and, last but not least, 4 operational tools.

THE 4 INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS

1 – OER Platform

The OER platform, available in seven languages, is meant to reach different international populations: students, trainers, and teachers who specialize in labour, business experts with substantial knowledge in HR and PR, entrepreneurs, and managing directors. The material has been transcoded into an e-learning format for the target groups and other stakeholders to benefit.

2 – Mapping the Soft Skills

The 2nd Intellectual Output linked soft skills with employability by mapping the most desirable soft skills among employers within the EU countries based on questionnaires distributed among the private sector and business associations.

3 – Toolkit to Learn New Abilities

For each soft skill identified as fundamental in the mapping’s process, a Training content is available, more specifically:

• Coordinating with others
• creativity
• emotional intelligence
• judgment and Decision-Making
• Complex Problem-Solving
• Critical Thinking
• Cognitive flexibility
• Go to the Essence Decision Games

4 – Guidelines and the Soft Skill Manifesto

In order to maintain project materials and dissemination after Erasmus + co-financing ended, intellectual output 4 consists of two components: 

1. The guidelines will aim to mainstream them and foster their use across geographic areas. You can find them here: Guidelines
2. A soft skills manifesto, aimed at university administrations to encourage employability and empowerment of employees in the business community and organisation environment. You can download the pdf here: Manifesto

Partners of the project

• UNIVERSITY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
• IBAF
• IDDP
• UNIDU
• IHF
• SSE RIGA
• INTERNET WEB SOLUTIONS
• UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS – VARNA

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The consortium of the YOUCAN project is formed by the following partners:

• Associazione di promozione sociale Joint (Italy)
• AMECE (Italy)
• 2nd Vocational School of Katerini (Greece)
• AidLean (Portugal)
• Ecepaa (Belgium)
• Caceres Chamber of Commerce (Spain)

YOUCAN (Youth with migrant drop-out tackling: capacity building) is a KA2 Erasmus project co-funded by the European Union, and its aim is to contribute to triggering the modernisation and to reinforcing the response of education, training systems and youth policies considering the main challenges provided by the migrant youth school drop-out and social exclusion, by building the capacity of the consortium to work transnationally and with a cross-sector approach.

To achieve that, it introduces some innovative features such as:

• the objective of making the consortium apply to fundings other than European ones;
• the diversity represented by the participating organisations/entities, coming from and acting in different fields such as youth, economics, policies, migrants – thus being cross-sectorial.

First Transnational Partner Meeting

The First Transnational Partner Meeting has happened in Turin (Italy) in April 2022. The association in charge of the event’s organisation and management was AMECE.

On the first working day, the participants has had a meeting with the Secretary of Youth Policies under the Municipality of Turin, Fausto Sorino. Mr. Sorino in his daily job deals with suburbs and urban regeneration projects, Turin educational city, schools’ construction, nurseries, pre-schools, services and opportunities for children and adolescents, school and university orientation, permanent territorial centers, municipal educational establishments, and youth policies.

The Secretary of the Youth Policies department explained how the social assistance services provided to young migrants and migrant families divides into two parts:

1. Health Formal Services | services that the office provides directly to people, without any other intermediary;
2. Community Welfare | Education and Youth Policies

What is called “community welfare” happens with the intervention of associations and organisations of the city that serve as intermediaries between the municipality of Turin and beneficiaries.

It works on different levels:

• “Case di quartiere” (Neighbourhood Houses) | public spaces specific to each neighbourhood where people can freely go to get help. There are 9 case del quartiere in Turin.
• Youth Centers (17 in total);
• Mosques (20 in total);
• Local associations.

The Secretary also presented the project “Torino Plurale“, a network of associations financed by the municipality of Turin, that provides migrant families with food, help in paying and managing taxes/bills, help with school, school supplies, and so on.

Provincial Center for Adults Education | CPIA 3

The second part of the day was dedicated to the visit to the CPIA 3 (“Centro Provinciale Insegnamento Adulti | Provincial Center for Adults Education”), a center of classes for unaccompanied minors with a migrant background, based in the neighbourhood of Mirafiori.
This center was originally born for adults attending school back in 1968, when a big, new car factory was built by FIAT.
The CPIA currently has 7 schools in Turin.
They also carry out Erasmus Plus projects for the mobility of the school staff (Key Action 1).

The YOUCAN participants took part to one of the afternoon classes, together with students from Bangladesh, Tunisia and Albania. 

A teacher explained how the school has got now two important and inclusive ongoing projects:

• “Try again, Sam!” | participated and founded by the municipality of Turin, Fondazione San Paolo and local associations chosen for their relevance on the territory | The project has the general purpose of experimenting new models of teaching, with the aim of ensuring the acquisition of essential skills concerning the first cycle of education, and toward the inclusion of pupils in school’s groups, encouraging integration. To do so, this project uses a network of local associations, oratories and parishes, making use of their social and educational potential. They strive to encourage the learning process, to give migrant young people a space to be listened and to self-express. The project offers them spaces to strengthen their self-esteem, and find support, also to fight the school drop-out phenomenon. 
• Minors Inclusion | through which youth workers and educators help out teachers especially with language mediation, as many young migrants arrive to Italy without knowing even English.

The class was formed by male students only, as the last migration streams toward Italy were basically interested by men and boys. As such, there are not many girls attending these classes but a few coming in the next weeks, as the teachers mentioned. 

The students live in two different shelter communities and are all unaccompanied minors, who left their country-of-origin and, by different means, reached Italy at the end of their journey. Even asked about the willing to tell their story, only a student stood up for it, and briefly described how he went through Libya and the isle of Lampedusa, before reaching Turin. Few of them arrived by plane, others through the Balkans. 

Most of them showed satisfaction with their current state, and the fact of being hosted in Italy. 

The teacher further explained another project, called “Pagella in tasca”, that the headmaster carried out together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Nigerian Prime Minister. Thanks to that project two Nigerian girls came studying to Italy. It is interesting to point out that this project is unique and unprecedented in Europe. These students are welcomed by local families during their stay. 

The final event was presented by Rocco De Paulis, a teacher at CPIA 3, who in a human and profound way explained which are the activities of the school,  such as workshops, a part from the traditional subjects.

Rocco De Paulis told the participant about the “Try again, Sam!” project, even if already mentioned beforehand. This project is carried out combining the synergies of teachers and educators, that work together with the migrant students. 

The migrant students show to have transversal competences that they acquired thanks to their life experiences, and educators/teachers encourage them in developing and using these soft-skills during workshops, while linguistic competences are mainly and mostly important when attending traditional classes. 

The analysis of Rocco De Paulis went even deeper on the way these migrant students face school: many of them never go to school at all, some of them came with illiteracy, without knowing how to write, not even in their own mother tongue. This background gave them a guilty feeling of not being good enough to learn, thus ending up blaming themselves when failing. Is therefore important that the educators and teachers working with these students receive a specific and relevant training. 

Library “Primo Levi” and partners meeting

On the second day of the TPM, the YOUCAN partners spent the morning going through a more detailed glance to the KA2 project itself, its activities, objectives, premises, and outputs, plus the International Partners Agreement (IPA). 

They have been then discussing the provision of applying to 3 Calls for Proposals other that European ones, identifying which ones could potentially be suitable to the consortium. Moreover, they have been organising the O2O events (“Organisation to Organisation”) happening in the future as part of the project’s activities, and consisting of a form of “job shadowing” where staff members go spend a week to another partner organisation to learn from their daily job and activities. 

The Communication and Dissemination strategy has been presented by Associazione Joint, and discussed over the possibility to reach the target – although indirect – group of migrant students adjusting and enlarging the dissemination on more platforms, such as SYRIUS, eTwinning and Education Gateway. 

In the afternoon, the participants took part in a visit to the “Primo Levi” Library, where the hosting association AMECE holds after-school activities for children and adolescent of foreign origins. 

L'articolo YOUCAN | First Transnational Partner Meeting in Italy proviene da Youth Networks.

YOUCAN (Youth Migrant Dropout Tackling: Capacity Building)

The Project

Objectives

1. opened synergies and reinforced cooperation with local organisations/partners active in the fields of education, training and youth or in other socio-economic sectors, strengthening collaboration among all actors within schools, as well as with families and other external stakeholders;
2. an increased allocation of financial resources (other than EU funds) to organise EU/international projects in the field of education, training and youth;
3. an increased quality in the preparation, implementation, monitoring and follow-up of EU/international projects and increased capacity and professionalism to work at EU/international level( improved management competences and internationalisation strategies).

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3rd EUROTUREC Conference

The team of the EUROTUREC project (ref. num. CSD-VI/372), with the support of external experts from the National Agency and NGOs with expertise in the sector, hold a conference to provide information about the Erasmus+ KA2 Partnership for Cooperation Call and to create a space for networking between potential applicants.

The conference takes place online, on February 25th from 13:30 to 16:00 CEST (15:30-18:00 Turkish Time), and it requires prior registration by February 22nd. 

There are only 15-20 places available, so please be specific in the info you put in the form to increase the chance of being selected.

The Schedule

Preparation task: each participant will have to prepare in advance a 1-slide presentation of their own organisation. 

Find out more about KA2 Erasmus+ Partnership for Cooperation Call here.

Read also

Erasmus+ Youth Project Writing Challenge

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• Italy (Stranaidea)
• Netherlands (Yes! Youth Exchange Service)
• Hungary (Galileo)
• Latvia (Jaunpils)

It started back in July 2019, with the very first event as a Transnational Training Course in Turin, Italy. During such event, teachers and youth workers from partner organisations experienced the Fairy Tales Life Storytelling Cards Method themselves. They learned and discovered how to implement the method in the 1st round of national workshops with school students, that took place later on in December.

Purpose of the project

The intent of this Strategic Partnership is to build an inclusive approach to formal and non-formal education on the basis of storytelling, through a specific practice, the “Fairy Tale Life cards”.

Methodology

The method includes the use of a deck of cards to create stories, under the inspiration of Vladimir Jakovlevič Propp’s cards and studies, about the identification of structures and elements recurring in the stories and tales, where diversity and different types of disadvantages are a factor belonging to the characters.

The Fairy Tales Life Storytelling Cards is a method that young people can use, with their own imagination, life experiences and empathic skills in order to work on Social Inclusion. The basis is an empty deck of cards and some supporting activities, but anyone is free to use only a part of it, the whole method or just to adapt it according to the needs of their target group.

Each time a group plays, they create a new and customized deck of cards. The group itself creates all the cards and actually draws them. Each deck of cards is a new adventure, with different settings, themes and characters. The creation of the deck of cards is the real challenge and the core of the method.

Project’s Results

The outputs of the project are meant to be disseminated to teachers and young people, who want to experiment social inclusion through this new, innovative way.

The results and outputs are downloadable.

Read also

Toolbox on Values, Sustainability and Social Impact of Social-Solidarity Economy

Civil Society Cooperation Call 2022 Erasmus KA3 Info Day

L'articolo Fairy Tales Life: Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership Project proviene da Youth Networks.

The Consortium

The organisation coordinating the DO-IT project is Ecepaa (European Center for Economic and Policy Analysis and Affairs). It is specialized in the development of European Union projects in the fields of social inclusion, education, youth and migrant. 

Associazione Joint is a youth association based in Italy, the work of which mainly focuses on providing learning opportunities to young people through international experiences, such as European Solidarity Corps, International volunteering, Work Camps, local and international Training Courses, Youth Exchanges and Capacity Building Projects.

AMECE (Association Maison d’Enfant pour la Culture et l’Education – Italy) is based in Turin. Its activities aim to understand and address the needs of children, teenagers and young adults with migrant backgrounds, most of them originally from north African countries. 

Fundacion Red Incola is a Foundation composed by nine religious entities. Its mission is to support the immigrant population in risky situations of exclusion, in the promotion and defense of their rights so that they can have a dignified life.  

The 2nd Vocation High School of Katerini is a school in Greece that serves around 600 students, aged 16 – 19, with 80 teachers and comprises four different sectors (Informatics, Healthcare & Welfare, Agriculture/Food Technology/Nutrition and Business/Economics). 

The Project

Complying with the general Erasmus Plus policy and the Call for Proposals in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the overall objective of the DO-IT project is to develop an innovative practice in the digital framework, while committing to a greater social inclusion of students with a migrant background by tackling the early-school-leaving phenomenon. On such a perspective, giving a transnational dimension to the project means to allow a deeper understanding and examination of the digital education sector, strong of a comparative analysis.

Moving forward, the specific objectives of the project are:

• Identify, develop and disseminate good practices and innovative digital tools to provide teachers and trainers with skills that make them able to address the needs of youth with a migrant background, arised as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic;
• Promote the recognition of digital competences and soft-skills acquired with youth with a migrant background while participating in informal activities;
• Increase the capacity of 50 teachers and trainers on digital competences by providing them with a training on the 5 competences framed in the “Digital Competence Framework 2.0”;
• Increase the capacity of 50 teachers and trainers to recognise the digital competences and soft-skills acquired by youth with a migrant background during informal experiences. 

The background

Given the above, the DO-IT project takes its origin from a general consideration over the consequences of Covid-19 towards the most disadvantaged young people (with a migrant background) in the education sector. 

In fact the lockdown restrictions over Europe, made compulsory by governments, have had different effects, depending on the family income. This establishes huge issues with respect to how to ensure access, equity and inclusion in the learning environment. 

From this perspective, and a consequence, while the indirect beneficiaries of the DO-IT project outputs are young people with a migrant background, the direct ones are the members of the organizations participating in the project itself, i.e. teachers, trainers, researchers, youth workers and associations of migrants and their children.

DO-IT implementation

The DO-IT project is expected to reach several results. The partners, bringing together their expertise in the field of reference, will be creating 5 questionnaires to deliver to 5 different categories of stakeholders:

• Youth workers;
• Trainers;
• Teachers;
• Researchers;
• Migrant associations members.

In addition to that, the consortium will be working on building 5 additional questionnaires for in-depth interviews. After collecting the data, the final result will be a digital publication over several topics, such as school dropout, lack of digital skills to cope with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the good and best practices to address in order to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic on the education and learning of young people with a migrant background. 

DO-IT therefore represents an innovative way to address the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on education, with a focus on the needs of youth with a migrant background and the wide range of professionals working with them.

Read also

Case Study: Youth Education in Post-COVID EU

Study on Youth Work in the EU

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