On July 3, 2022, the ESSEI delegation was welcome by Katabba cultural association in Monforte San Giorgio. An official meeting was organized at the municipality of Monforte San Giorgio opened to the civil society. During the event, Giuseppe Cannistrà, major of Monforte San Giorgio (ME), stressed how the European Union funded projects improve the lives of European citizens.
The dissemination event was followed in the next days by meetings between ESSEI and Katabba to discuss the elaboration of the project results: the elaboration of a guide for small associations wishing to operate at European level and the internationalisation strategy of the Katabba association.
The project activities will culminate in the visit of the Katabba association representatives in Brussels at the end of September 2022.
Since March 2021, the SOS Creativity’ strategic partnership – an international consortium represented by eight organisations from six Member States – is collaborating to develop new training resources and methodologies for the empowerment of seniors’ ICT skills and proficiency. So far, the implementation of the project lead to the following results – concrete deliverables of the project that are available for free consultation via the official Open Education Resource Platform: https://www.soscreativity.eu/index.php
The set-up of the very website of the project: digital repository of news, material and training resources delivered by partners throughout implementation. The access to the platform does not require any log-in credential, so as to ease as much as possible the usability of the content within, and project’s digital identity among relevant stakeholders and groups of interest. Each upload is translated into all official languages of the Countries represented by participating organisation, in order to facilitate the browsing experience even of non-proficient ENG speakers.
The SOS Self-Assessment tool: a tailored-made algorithm which calculates the level of IT risks awareness of target group users in the field of online cultural resources available. The IT index will be an instrument that allows adults to assess their awareness in the domain of IT risks related to cultural offers. The SOS Self-Assessment Tool will not be a statistical index, but an operational tool to support the development of targeted-training solutions for adults.
The SOS Cultural Resources Mapping: an international assessment of free cultural resources and creativity tools already available online in each partners’ countries aiming at extrapolating and intercepting those digital skills and competences that late digitals might need to make the most of them and have an in-depth analysis of the phenomenology on the degree of digital gap among ICT-low-skilled adults.
Each of the training module is tailored to provide for easy-to-assess and ready-to-use capacity building material that can help targets in acquiring new knowledge and competences to browse the web safely, effectively and efficiently.
Interacting with digital technologies for entertainment and culture
Basics of digital technologies: what you should know about internet
Social media communication for culture and creativity
Cultural opportunities online
It is never too late to… Spend money on culture, comfortably seated on the armchair
Digital identity and online reputation
How to identify missing information and fake news online in a culture relevant context
Threats and challenges on social media: dos and donts
What is gdpr?
Developing digital content. Integrating and reworking digital content.
Online security and creativity: what’s up?
Platforms promoting culture and how they work
Each of these modules has been delivered in piloting version and the overall curricula reached a cohort of 180 people, representative both of final users and STKHs in general (i.e., professionals operating in the domain of Adult Education).
Results emerging from the validation cycle (i.e., impression of learners and participants) have been collected by all partners after conclusion of the training sessions and shared with the whole consortium for assessment and stock taking of lessons learnt.
These inputs will flow into the SOS Guidelines for Future Use: this document will guarantee transferability as they will be a tool to guide Adult Education teachers and operators who intend to engage in a process of raising awareness and training late digitals on a more conscious use of cultural and creative resources in general and on Internet and social media risks and opportunities as a side effect.
The guidelines will refer to both practical and organizational aspects as well as issues of educational-pedagogical approach and content. These will be of great use to encourage the introduction of SOS Creativity training courses in elderly centres or organizations.
EYES (Enlarging Youth Entrepreneurial Spirits) is an international project co-financed by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme; the project is implemented and developed by six organisations from six countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Spain & Sweden) sharing the ultimate aim to support professionals in vocational training and integration in changing their teaching practices, to promote the development of a collective entrepreneurial culture and democratic values among young people. After more than 2 years of close collaboration, partners are finally ready to declare the official conclusion of the project. Despite COVID outbreak, the partnership demonstrates great sense of resilience and endurance, bringing the conclusion the foreseen activates without prejudice the quality of deliverables and overall performance. The project concludes in June 2022, with a formative assessment by all partners of impact and longterm sustainability. Looking back, all participating organisations managed to collect and compile very interesting results that will further sustain the international entrepreneurial VET ecosystem in advancing innovative coaching and mentoring methods for business and entrepreneurial literacy. All resources are available via the official e-learning platform of the project: http://eyes-project.eu/
ESSEI and Katabba started the online training on Erasmus and European projects. The training consists of 10 online meetings, in which the trainers of ESSEI will explain to the staff of the cultural association Katabba how the Erasmus programme works.
The aim of this activity is to make the staff of Katabba aware of the possibilities offered by the Erasmus programme for small cultural association. The Capacity Building will help also ESSEI and Katabba to start drafting the handbook for small organizations and the internationalisation strategy of Katabba. These two documents are the main tangible outputs of the BLOSSOM project.
ESSEIis very proud to be Associated Partner of the Fairfood Project, funded by the European Commission within the framework of the Erasmus + Programme.
The aim of Fairfood is to contribute to the improvement of health through a nutritional education inspired by the rich European gastronomic culture, which counts on the Mediterranean diet, an intangible heritage of humanity. To preserve the European culinary cultural heritage and to stop climate change, it is necessary to promote the way our ancestors ate, with natural products, typical of the territory, treated in a simple way and consumed in its season.
To reach this objective the Consortium has developed a training course with 5 Modules divided in 2 level (Basic and Advanced)
Module 1. General issues on healthy and low environmental impact foods
Module 2. Typical local products and varieties
Module 3. Traditional food preservation/conservation techniques
Module 4. Food elaboration/consumption techniques
Module 5. Traditional, local and heritage related recipes
The training is available online and it is ready for the Test&Validation phase. Each trainer adopting the Fairfood course or each student attending it, can leave a feedback on the website to help partners to fine-tune the contents and to provide an high quality training.
EYES (Enlarging Youth Entrepreneurial Spirits) is an international project co-financed by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme; the project is implemented and developed by six organisations from six countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Spain & Sweden) sharing the ultimate aim to support professionals in vocational training and integration in changing their teaching practices, to promote the development of a collective entrepreneurial culture and democratic values among young people.
One of the key output of this project is represented by the so-defined Methodological Guide for Trainers, a formal repository available to the EU VET ecosystem at large of good practices, recommendations, DOs and DON’Ts stemming from the project to better help professional of entrepreneurial training in readapting their tools and techniques for business education.
The Methodological Guide compile all EYES training tools with detailed explanations of key delivery means to enhance the learning experience of students. In that sense, the Guide represent as well the digital legacy of the project with the intention to train-the-trainers on what are the most effective coaching means for aspiring young entrepreneurs as stemming from the EYES’ experience.
The Guide is integrated with practical recommendations for mentoring of young students collected by partners during implementation of the EYES’ piloting cycles, which involved +100 at international level across Europe.
The reliability and robustness of these guidelines benefits from the fact that they include contributions from all partners, widening the potential implications the document might have for users and targets. Moreover, the Methodology embrace the implementation of the project as a whole, diversifying the scale of key takeaways users might extrapolate from it.
Core elements of the Methodology is most certainly represented by its usability and accessibility. In the view of partners, its content is designed to be as facilitating as possible of new, innovative and needs-based initiatives that might potentially operate in the same scope of the EYES project – regardless of the specific geographical context.
Along with trans-nationality and innovativeness, a key element of centralised funds’ projects is represented indeed by transferability. By compiling the Methodology, partners will give access to the general cohort of VET providers and practitioners to precious background insights into the project that otherwise would not be of public disclosure.
A detailed ratio of the project and the pathways that lead to EYES’ results and impacts are all included in the Methodology. With that, stakeholders and groups of interest orbiting around the entrepreneurial VET ecosystem will have at their full disposal all the elements they need to implement within their local context – or in international environments – EYES-like initiatives that in turn contributes to the long-term sustainability and multiplier effect of the project.
To know more about the project and available resources, please visit: www.eyes-project.eu
The cultural association and ESSEI have elaborated the project logo of BLOSSOM.
BLOSSOM (Building Learning Opportunities to Support Small Organisations for Multiculturalism) is an Erasmus Small scale project aiming to support organizations in geographical disadvantage to participate in international projects.
The first meeting of the Erasmus project “Building learning opportunities to support small organisations for multiculturalism” (BLOSSOM) has just ended. This meeting was attended by representatives of the associations Katabba and ESSEI, the two organisations involved in the project, and the mayor of the municipality of Monforte San Giorgio.
During the project meeting, partners discussed which activities are to be carried out in the coming weeks for the implementation of the BLOSSOM project. After a series of online training activities to be held in April and May, in June trainers from the Belgian ESSEI organisation will visit Monforte San Giorgio in an operational mission in which the municipality of Monforte San Giorgio and the local community will be actively involved.
Thanks to the support of the European Commission and the Erasmus programme, the Katabba association will be able to strengthen its operational capacities in order to collaborate with other organisations at European level and be an active player in transnational cultural initiatives.
EYES (Enlarging Youth Entrepreneurial Spirits) is an international project co-financed by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme; the project is implemented and developed by six organisations from six countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Spain & Sweden) sharing the ultimate aim to support professionals in vocational training and integration in changing their teaching practices, to promote the development of a collective entrepreneurial culture and democratic values among young people.
To handle the design of the training programme and to set-up the expected learning outcomes (the so called “EYES REPOSITORY”), the Strategic Partnership relied on the EntreComp Framework, the official model promoted by the European Commission as a reference paradigm for teaching, coaching and educating on entrepreneurial competences.
To date, the EntreComp Framework is still the most valuable reference for entrepreneurial education, and it is conceived to be feasible and “exploitable” for all potential targets (Adult Learners as well as High Scholl students). Partners went through the Framework and made use of the 59 learning outcomes that are described on the intermediate / lower level of the model itself – in compliance with Level 3 of the EQF, the most appropriate to address EYES’ target group.
Recently, the Joint Research Centre from the European Commission published also the third official EntreComp’s follow-up: EntreComp Playbook, a resource that is extremely useful for EYES’ users and VET professionals addressed by the project.
Professionals in the domain of entrepreneurial education that wish to rely on our training material to enrich and diversify their training offer can rely on the EntreComp Playbook the design their overall piloting strategies…
All training material developed by partners is available for free at: https://eyesmodules.eu/
EYES (Enlarging Youth Entrepreneurial Spirits) is an international project co-financed by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme; the project is implemented and developed by six organisations from six countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Spain & Sweden) sharing the ultimate aim to support professionals in vocational training and integration in changing their teaching practices, to promote the development of a collective entrepreneurial culture and democratic values among young people.
The training framework of the EYES project stems from the EntreComp Framework, the official model promoted by the European Commission as a reference paradigm for teaching, coaching and educating on entrepreneurial competences.
To date, the EntreComp is still the most valuable reference for entrepreneurial education, and it is conceived to be feasible and “exploitable” for all potential targets (Adult Learners as well as High Scholl students). Partners went through the Framework and made use of the 59 learning outcomes that are described on the intermediate / lower level of the model itself – in compliance with Level 3 of the EQF, the most appropriate to address EYES’ target group.
During the last cycle of project implementation, partners gathered together a cohort of 10 young students (i.e., fresh graduates, aspiring your entrepreneurs, etc.) to pilot the EYES training framework: a precious opportunity to test and validate its pedagogical accuracy and educational reliability overall.
The official launch of the piloting sessions has been anticipated by the discussion and sharing among partners of a detailed implementation plan, intended to ease the operationalisation of testing activities at consortium level, while providing for overall guidance. Thanks to that, partners could rely on a common reference detailing: – Scale and scope of piloting activates – General structures of the events – Key learning outcomes expected from the training session – Share of roles and responsibilities among partners (i.e., which partner delivers which training module) – Additional tips for coaching of young aspiring entrepreneurs – Means for the assessment of learners’ satisfaction and reporting
Upon compliance with few essential common denominators, each partner was free to rely on whatever training format envisioned by their internal coaching and training staff as the most suitable to engage, retain and empower learners.
Each participating organisation piloted their and one of their project colleagues’ module, so as to diversify the content and of the sessions, and make sure that the whole EYES curricula was covered. Depending on the opportunity, partners implemented the piloting both in online and offline settings following a calendar scheduled together with participants.
The second implementation cycle of the piloting foreseen a series of 1-on-1 coaching sessions with students selected form the general which have demonstrated during the training period a strong, robust and deep predisposition to pursue an entrepreneurial career.
Coaching session have been tailored by the training staff of partners on the specific “business” needs of participants, with narrowed focus on what opportunities, threats, weaknesses and strengths seems stemming from their prototype of entrepreneurial idea: coaches helped students in preparing a beta-version of business plan, guiding them on how to pitch their idea, identify further ways to improve / enhance their business acumen, management literacy and overall sense of initiative, and all in all, to keep on pursuing their entrepreneurial interests.
On a topic level, highlights of the coaching sessions were:
Outline of the business idea, very brief presentation of the needs/opportunities addressed
The actual presentation of the business offer (service and/or product).
Communication, Advertising and Marketing (i.e., Marketing Mix)
Essentials of Project Management
Estimation of Cost structure and Revenue Streams (i.e., Budgeting)
Reaction among participants were extremely grateful, these events represented for the training staff of partner a vivid opportunity to see and experience in first hand brilliant entrepreneurial minds in-the-making, nurturing in them great expectations for the future…
Takeaways have been collected by trainers for internal reporting and will be compiled in the methodological guide for trainers: a formal deliverable of the project intended to ease and maximise the transferability, portability and scalability of EYES-like initiative across Europe by any other VET professional interested in capitalising on partners’ experience – what professionals of EU-founded projects recall as “Multiplier Effect”.
To know more about the project and available resources, please visit: www.eyes-project.eu
