Interested in Social Entrepreneurship ? Here's a Training Manual

After two years of work the time has come to share the outputs of an interesting European project.

As part of the Erasmus+ project in Sustain Your Life through Social Entrepreneurship, three 5-day training courses were developed and delivered in three different countries, gathering 28 participants per venue.

Each of the three training courses that were delivered had its own theme, its own training objectives and activities as well as its own trainers. All this and more, you can find in the overall training course descriptions that were compiled in a training manual together with a good diversity of valuable internet resources for further reference.

The overall goal was to give a comprehensive introduction to social entrepreneurship, to equip participants with the tools and resources for setting up their own social start-ups, by providing them with the resources to gain more in-depth insights into this innovative approach to social change, to turn needs into action, to demonstrate different (business) models of social entrepreneurship, to show sustainable strategies for building momentum for social entrepreneurship activities, to learn from the tips and tricks in order to be an effective change maker in their field of interest, to elaborate on possible ideas (and passions) for starting a social enterprise or launching a venture, or adding a social entrepreneurship-oriented perspective to an existing entity. The ulterior drive behind all of the training activities has been to support young people realize their dreams of a better world.


  
The teaching materials and resources of the training courses are displayed here in the manual (as well as in the open learning portal on www.sustainyourlife.eu) in such a way that they provide experienced trainers with solid information as well as flexible educational tools and handouts, which may be utilised and adapted according to their specific needs. The specific training activities of each of the T C’s have been described in detail. They can be used in part, according to the needs of the trainers, work settings and the time available. In other words, feel free to pick and choose your own educational / training activities from the 50 + that are displayed here in the Training Manual below.

Feel free to download the manual free of charge.

We hope it will provide you with lots of inspiration for your training activities to have young people sustain their lives through social entrepreneurship.

 

Disclaimer: The EC support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

What is social entrepreneurship ?

This is the question that we put to the participants on the final day of a training course held in Rotterdam, autumn 2016. The Training Course was organised within the framework of a European project entitled Sustain Your Life through Social Entrepreneurship. The project was co-funded by the Erasmus + programme of the EU.

Here's what some of the participants said:

This video, as well as the following two, was edited by Jeroen Wouters, lecturer at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Here's another videoclip giving you a glimpse of what the participants to the T C saw during the course by way of field visits.

Finally, this is where you can hear some of the participants expressing what they learned during the training course on social and cultural entrepreneurship:

Curious to read and see more ? Here's a link to the open e-learning portal website that resulted from the project as one of the outputs.
If you click the button Training Programmes you get access to all of the activities that were provided to a total of nearly 80 participants during three organised training courses held in three different countries across the two years' run of the project.

Disclaimer: The EC support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

update on Sustain Your Life through Social Entrepreneurship

Within the framework of the Erasmus + project “Sustain your life through social entrepreneurship” a new group of 28 youth workers joined the experience of the third and last international pilot training course dedicated to theme of  “A Sense of Initiative and Entrepreneurship”.

The training course was organized by Freguesia de Cascais e Estoril, the Portuguese partner of the project, and took place in the beautiful city of Cascais (Portugal) from the 22nd to the 26th of January. This 5 days' training course approached social entrepreneurship and innovation from a very practical point of view. There was a strong focus on learning by doing, especially since the topic is very much linked to the transversion of ideas into actions.

The training course aimed to give a practical approach to social entrepreneurship. Planned in accordance with the principles of non formal education it had four main stages: “Chaos & Order” - from creativity to organization; “Balance” - work within a group; “Into the practice” - developing a project to put ideas into action (Tree of problems/Dragon Dreaming); and rounding off with “Opening towards the future”. Designing the course in this way was meant to provide insights and learning opportunities to all the participants.

A strong aspect was the opportunity that was offered to the participants at several moments during the week to wear a “meta-hat” and analyse the activities and process from a youth worker's point of view, establishing how they could use the exercises and approaches in their local contexts.

This experience was built on both individual and group learning, always respecting participants' needs. Every single day reflection groups were set up in order to enhance and reinforce what had been learned that day.

Upcoming

By the end of this March project partners will meet in Cascais to discuss project progress and agree on the most appropriate tools to share results with a wider audience of youth workers and stakeholders.

More updates on a regular basis can be found on the Facebook page of Sustain Your Life through Social Entrepreneurship.

TC Rotterdam, in retrospect

First of all a big thank you to the trainer, the speakers and the participants for turning the training course held here in Rotterdam, within the school of social work, into such a wonderful experience for all involved.
It was a truly astonishing event.

  The aim of the training course was to equip participants with the entrepreneurial tools and basics of business and financial management models for social enterprises. By visiting a diversity of good practices in Rotterdam and its surroundings participants got acquainted with the decision making processes of the social entrepreneurs involved.  By comparing and contrasting the participants established what the key success factors are for sustainable social and cultural entrepreneurship in order to achieve lasting positive social impact.

 

The stresses currently experienced by various social systems around the world regarding health, welfare, pensions, education, and so on, present a wide range of opportunities for social business to innovate in core products and services. Young people or the millennial generation will increasingly be required to define new initiatives grounded in social purpose and decide on business models that deliver sustainable, profitable growth creating positive impact to solve the complex challenges that our planet faces.

 

The 28 participants from Romania, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands learned how to proceed from  a personal passion or personal needs to a realistic business plan or model with social value, knowing what steps to take and expect the unexpected.

 

   

Although all came with an open mind, they were far from empty-headed: they shared their expertise, exchanged ideas, debated key issues and built on each other's plans and projects. 


 

Here are some of the participants' statements:

Of course there are some differences between the countries, but in reality the core values and the motivation that all the people in this room have are the same, the strength and the will to be part of the change and improve our work. In this training course we are learning (and that is very important) to be practical. (Italian participant)

 
This training course has given me the possibility to see a different point of view, to create a  new method that is useful to become more active in my work. The EU has given me the opportunity to see what there is outside of my own country.(Italian participant)

 
This TC is bringing me new skills, new contacts and new networks, to develop a stronger core value proposition for our association in Spain so that we can become more sustainable and face the new challenge of reaching Europe within 3 years. This TC has opened so many new doors for me personally and also for my project. I really believe we can do better together. (Spanish participant)

 I had a great experience, learned so much and had a lot of fun with you! This international group has helped me a lot because different people have different ideas. (Dutch participant)

Hi everyone :) I hope all of you are now safe back home and relaxing from this complex and full immersion week! I wanted to thank all of you for voting for Portugal on the final project presentation through choosing my project and personal dream :)  I hope to able to invite all of you in the future one day. When I will open this centre for the community, I'll have all of you in mind for sure. It was a great pleasure to meet so many interesting people and an inspiration to be with you all this past week. I already miss the walk from Witte de With to go to the Uni in the cold morning =)  Thank you amazing team!
I wish you all great success and new social business to pop up soon :)
(Final message from Portuguese participant)

  Guess what, next Sunday I will facilitate a 2h workshop about social impact of social entrepreneurship. Now ...after my Rotterdam experience I have input!
(after returning home, from a Romanian participant)

For our Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences it was a great experience to host such a dedicated group of youth and social workers from around Europe. That makes me think of something Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world.”

Note added about a month later:
here's a message from one of the participants. "Dear people! I just wanted to share with you that a foundation just gave us a grant to develop a social entrepreneurship formation during 6 months in rural areas with design thinking techniques. So I will try my best inspiring new people to "sustain their lives through social entrepreneurship".

Training Course to be held in Rotterdam

Here's the poster for the upcoming Training Course in Social and Cultural Entrepreneurship.
We are looking forward to receiving 28 participants here within the School of Social Work at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, location Museumpark.
The trainer will be Marianne Lindhout.

Take a quick look at a small image of the announcements on the poster here

This training course is part of a series of 3 training courses held within the framework of an Erasmus + project under the title of Sustain Your Life through Social Entrepreneurship, a two-year European project co-funded by the Erasmus + programme of the European Union.

Looking forward to meeting you all here at our venue, kind regards from the Rotterdam team.

Training Course in Palermo, day 2

The story of the training course in Palermo continues, from their base in the convent of San Giovanni Battista di Baida.
By guest blogger Alex Adriana:

Baida - getting to know the topic

So, we started the second day with one of the games we did on the first day. The facebook game. The people who didn’t have their picture drawn yet, got it today. The other energizer was massaging each other in a big circle. I noticed that it’s very common to touch each other in a lot of cultures. Sometimes I’m okay with that but other times it makes me a bit uncomfortable though.

Today was about the homo eroticus (his-story). It was about how many historical happenings are written from a male perspective and females are nowhere to be found. So, we talked a lot more about the women in this story. There was an assigment and we had to write down a few fictional characters (from fairy tales and myths) and divide them into three groups: virgin woman, fertile (sexually active) woman and the old woman. It was very funny and nice to see that many of the Slavic fairy tales are the same as the ones I know from Dutch culture.

After the coffee break we did a very nice energizer, called Mazinga! It’s very simple, yet very powerful. And we continued with the lecture, when our lecturer said something very inspiring I think: "Every  woman is a nun, even when she shows her nipples". To me it means there is nothing about a human (male nor female) body to sexualize. Everyone’s body is sacred.

After lunch we had time to prepare our presentation, but since the internet wasn’t working and we had other technical difficulties we couldn’t finish our powerpoint. We ended up making a poster, which was also very nice. But, due to lack of time we weren’t able to present this day, so it moved to the other day.

After dinner we had the opportunity to show the organisation we represent. In our case that’s our school, as well as the internship me and Ruby (one of my classmates) are doing. There were many other organisations, some of which I’m really interested in. For example, some of them work with the same method, but others are in a totally different field of work. In the late evening we had a party on the rooftop of the monastery, which has an amazingly beautiful view. I talked with a lot of nice people and I got to know some people a bit better.

Day 2 was a very nice day, but I was also a bit sleepy and I felt like the lectures were a bit too long here and there. But the people here are very, very nice!

A Training Course in Palermo, Sicily

This week three students from the CMV study programme went to Sicily for a training course under the title of Let's Bridge The Gap (or: LBTG for short). The programme was hosted and organised by CESIE, an international partner of our school of social work, under the Youth in Action programme which is funded by the EU.
One of the students was asked to act as guest blogger here.
Here's what Alex Adriana has written on her own blog, which was copied here:

Baida – getting to know each other

by ladyalexx

So, the first day here in Baida started off with a groupbuilding activity called Mission Impossible. We had to do all sorts of things within our group but we had limited time. We had to take the funniest group picture, interview 5 people about what identity means to them, find out the price of coca cola, a bus ticket and chocolate in different countries. We had to list 35 countries, sing happy birthday in as many languages as possible, make up a story of a few certain words and we had to make a sixties commercial for young people. After this we had a short break and then we wrote down our fears and expectations of this project. Not really sharing it, but putting it on post-it notes and hang them in the lecture hall. After lunch we did a game, called ‘Facebook’. We had an inner circle who were the models for the outer circle. The outer circle had to change seats every few seconds so everybody took part in drawing the person from the inner circle. It was very funny.

Then things really started. The concept of gender and sexuality was introduced and in pairs we had to answer questions and tell our findings to the group. I had to talk about what the difference is between sex and gender. For the rest of the day we worked on a big puzzle with all sorts of terms that can be divided into different groups. First we made the puzzle in small groups and then we made the puzzle with the whole group, so everybody could see what the level of knowledge of the group is. The exercise was also meant to have a common ground of the words we use and what they mean. 

We ended the first day with an aphrodisiac dinner where we presented our national food which is also kind of aphrodisiac. The other countries had many nice things as well. After dinner we went up to the roof with a few people and it was very nice, we socialized more than during the project I think.

In general, I really like being here. The people are very nice and open minded. All of the assignments really helped to get to know each other better and really make us a group."

International week in Rotterdam

Last week had an international flavour: all year 4 students of the programme in social work & services focused on the global theme of human rights.
The week kicked off with lectures by Hilary Jenkinson , Lydia Sapouna and Mary Wilson from our partner university, the Applied Social Studies programme at University College Cork, Ireland.


All week discussions of articles from the universal declaration of human rights took centre stage, in relation to the contributions a social worker can make. All this inspired by the global agenda.
The week was rounded off by individual one-minute elevator pitches in which students expressed their personal views on the value or the principles of human rights.
Here's one example of such an elevator pitch: (posted and shared on a tumblr site kept by one of the lecturers involved) : http://socworkrotterdam.tumblr.com/post/45699975857/glenda-roseval-on-social-work-and-human-rights
or to be watched here:

My Erasmus learning experience in Rotterdam

By guest editor Rosemary from Ireland

Although there are clear educational benefits to be gained from going on student Erasmus exchange, it is not the only reason to take part. The course in itself, gave me a different perspective. It was more European and it was interesting to compare two countries. Holland is a very modern and multi-cultural place so you really get to see how they established their state and constitution in a very open minded and liberal manner. We studied subjects such as Global Citizenship and Multiculturalism, which really helped open our minds to modern thinking and understanding of the future’s Education System.

The Erasmus Programme’s origins: Formalised in 1987, the programme was named after the Dutch Renaissance philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, who was a keen proponent of pan-European study as a means to ensure that education did not become dogmatic. By offering European students the opportunity to experience a different education system, the Erasmus programme hopes to encourage a pluralistic approach to learning and, consequently, improve the education available to all EU citizens. I agree that the Erasmus experience certainly improved my understanding of education and has helped me in my approach to my third year of study in Montessori Education with confidence.

Hogeschool Rotterdam is one of the best colleges in Europe, so the standard of teaching and the standard of the students were really great, so I have improved greatly in critical thinking and essay formatting. Nevertheless, it was outside the lecture environment that I felt the biggest gains were made. I feel much more comfortable now than I maybe would have perhaps before X-mas because you really do have no choice but to come out of your shell a bit more and take part in putting yourself outside of your comfort zone. This personal development side of Erasmus is certainly something that I benefited from the programme. I feel I have matured and gained better independence. Basically I have learned how to do things independently for the first time by myself; I didn’t have my normal support structures such as friends and family to rely on. A lot of the students in my class also had some great travel opportunities. While in The Netherlands, you’re only a short train ride away from another country and so a lot of my classmates have gone home with some great travel stories. My fellow student and I visited other Erasmus students from our class to Leuven, Belgium which was so much fun and easy to do.

I cannot express enough how valuable this experience was both for me personally and educationally. I have made some really great friends who have all left me with open invites to come visit them when I would like. I have grown so much in such a short amount of time which leaves me to appreciate that I am capable of so much as a future teacher and Montessorian. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity and for believing in me to successfully complete and appreciate the Erasmus Programme. It was really “Prima.!”

CLIL course in retrospect

“Using languages to learn and learning to use languages” : it all sounded so promising and intriguing and right up my street ! So how did the overall experience turn out to be a disappointing one?

We arrived as a diverse group from at least 9 different European countries and from different educational settings. All of the 10 Comenius group members and Valencian participants had come with hopes and expectations to learn, some a little unsure of what to expect, others having already had some exposure to CLIL ideas and practices.
I turned out to be the only participant from higher education. This was something I had sort of anticipated when I selected the course from the Grundtvig training database as it fell under Comenius. This would still be interesting for me however, I’d been assured by the course organiser, when I asked for advice: CLIL was definitely also appropriate in higher education. Yet it took 5 days to hear in the final session from the course leader that in fact CLIL was not really a thing for higher education, in contrast to primary and secondary schools.
On the plus side, what I took away from the course was better insights in the different educational settings from the other participants (esp. the Spanish), in other words a wider understanding of (lifelong) learning in Europe. The wonderful cooperative work in the mixed groups, the passion with which most participants spoke about education, the intercultural / international experience, the creative ideas that came up by free association of all present, the insightful presentations of the primary and secondary school teachers that shared their hands-on experiences with us, the Favara school visit: these were all positive and stimulating aspects in the course.
I often learn best when I actively participate and contribute, I try to be constructive to make a course a success and I share what I know, because I realise time and again that there is so much you get in return. That worked best when we got the assignment to design a model and apply the 4 C model (communication, culture, content and cognition) to work out the theme of Global Citizenship.
On the whole, the course group assignments were not bad. However, the feedback on them was: after reporting back or presenting results of the group work, the course leader often quickly went on to press a message on us that had already been in his mind before anyone said anything and then steered us into another direction. The same thing happened when a participant answered a question: a superficial response, hardly any real, content based dialogue in getting to grips with some of the real CLIL issues. That's why a feeling of being ignored arose. Others started complaining in the breaks about the lack of input and materials.
Outright critical were the participants who had seen our course leader working on his computer and replying to mails during the sessions, even when participants were presenting their CLIL lesson plans e.g.
It was interesting for me to see that some had decided to be as indifferent as our course leader and started working on their everyday tasks as well or playing games on a notebook, as a sign of silent protest. This kind of passive resistance was a cultural lesson to me from Greece. Another one was the hesitation on the part of the Spanish participants to voice their opinions when some Comenius group participants invited them to express their views on the course and its contents at the end of the day.
The Valencian Board of Education, the Conselleria d’ Educació Generalitat Valenciana, is an important governmental organisation with a lot of power. In order not to jeopardise their careers or to face future negative measures the Valencian participants refrained from openly commenting on the way the 5 day course was run.
As for the 5 day programme, it had undergone some changes by the time we got our folders at the start of the week. In itself that’s not a problem. However, the actual programme was definitely a downgraded version of the provisional one, having deleted 2 speakers / CLIL experts. Not only that, but the course facilitator didn’t really adhere to the updated programme either. We never had the review of the day for example.
Anticipating a final evaluation on the last day we were dumbstruck (again) by seeing the course end without reviewing it and / or discussing our individual experiences and learning results. We did get a compliment however! We’d been the most active and best CLIL group so far. Now why didn’t that produce any smiles on our faces, hmm? Was there an evaluative questionnaire then??? No chance.
And then there was the issue of the course costs… another intensively debated issue in our Comenius group. No one really understood why the rate for accommodation costs had been set at the price of 650 euros when hotel accommodation (incl. 5 breakfasts) was only 275 euros and lunches around 75 euros all in all. Our morning coffee with delicacies (and possibly other catering provisions) can hardly have amounted to 300 euros per person. In a discussion with the two people in charge, these costs could not satisfactorily be accounted for on the spot.
To sum it up: CLIL is an interesting, promising, innovative educational approach, well worth exploring and implementing. However, if you decide to take a State-of the-Art CLIL course, just make sure (or hope and pray) that it is not the pompous David Marsh who is the course facilitator. Here's the result of the photos I took.

This course has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This blog post reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.