The project
Background
The project took roots from the urge for a positive social change to be brought about by enhanced skills and community cooperation in order to extend equal opportunity and social inclusion to adults in search of jobs, especially the rural ones who are left behind as a consequence of the recent economic slowdown. Entrepreneurship, or job-creation was promoted as an effective alternative to overcome the issue of job scarcity.
With this project our primary aim was to enrich our adult staff and local participants with up-to-date knowledge of social entrepreneurship and concrete NFE skills in order to make them the right catalyst for putting into motion and/or guiding fellow community members to activate sustainable social enterprises. In addition, the project implementation was also aimed at promoting cultural, social and ethnic diversity among participants through the use of diversified forms and methods of personal expression, entrepreneurial spirit and creativity.
Objectives
The project’s specific objectives were:
- To improve key competences and self-esteem among our adult staff and local people in an evidence-based manner;
- To stimulate ideas for community development models basing on traditional resources and new modern, dynamic elements;
- To encourage their social entrepreneurial spirit, competences, and related mentoring ability;
- To increase mobility and awareness about European opportunities among local people living in less developed areas through Erasmus+.
Implementation
The Social Start-ups Cultivators was a Adults Mobility project that provided 08 participants from Tusa, Italy under the coordination of Association New Horizons with a blended learning mobility virtual and face-to-face in Greece.
The project theme was on social entrepreneurship in struggling rural context that was meant to help inspire ideas and initiatives to develop the local territory.
Under the instruction of SOCIAL YOUTH DEVELOPMENT CIVIL NONPROFIT SOCIETY, the training partner in Greece, the group attended intensive learning sessions with a sector-specific and rural focused orientation, workshops and outdoors study visits aiming at stimulating and showcasing possible solutions to cohesive territorial development.
Results
Following the Learning Mobility, participants increased their active participation in the society, developed new competences, ideas and most importantly the can-do spirit. This way, the project provided a real opportunity to foster an entrepreneurial culture among the community and wider public.
As follow-up, New Horizons and participants will be able to cooperate more closely and implement future projects in the frame of Erasmus+ in line with the topic, involving even more local people with fewer opportunities.
Start date 01-09-2019 – End date 31-12-2021
Programme: Erasmus+ – Project Reference: 2019-1-IT02-KA104-061965
Key Action: Learning Mobility of Individuals – Action type: Adult education staff mobility
Awarded as Good Practice
PARTNERSHIP
New Horizons (Italy), Coordinator
Link to the Project card on Erasmus+ Results Platform.