CONTEXT Found in the Executive Summary of the report 'The Missing Entrepreneurs 2017 - Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship'; only 4.1% of the 30.6M self employed within the European Union in 2016 were youth. This is a significant under-representation relative to their share in employment. The Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan requires training to support business growth and actions reigniting the culture of entrepreneurship to nurture the new generation of entrepreneurs. This project seeks to do this using an existing enterprise education initiative 'YouNG' as a template. This targets young people in secondary education, it aims to embed 'Enterprise Education' into mainstream delivery, be more inclusive to cater for those with a disability and/or facing educational difficulties. PROJECT AIMS a) To embed the ‘YouNG Market’ (Enterprise Skills Development Activity) into mainstream curriculum delivery and deliver ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION for youth in schools; b) Make the ‘YouNG Market’ accessible to students of DISADVANTAGE with the capability of taking part successfully but who face barriers in doing so, improving their SOCIAL INCLUSION; c) Involve crucial STAKEHOLDERS (Teachers/Trainers and Employers) in delivery of the programme so they play a part in entrepreneurship education and creating a pathway for social inclusion. No. and PROFILE of PARTICIPANTS ➢We will work with 460 young people in secondary education between the ages of 15 - 19 years, 211 will be working at EQF Level 2, 144 at EQF Level 3, 85 are facing educational difficulties and 20 will be attending Special Educational Needs Schools; ➢A further 60 young people will be recruited to work with us in an informal educational setting; ➢We will work with 65 Teacher/Trainers, 15 will be based in Special Educational Needs Schools, 20 are predominantly working with those facing educational difficulties, 20 are mainly teaching at EQF Level 2, the final 10 at Level 3; ➢The final group of participants will be 40 employees, who are volunteering to mentor student participants involved in a 'YouNG Market' or similar enterprise education initiative. ACTIVITIES This project will focus on enabling the delivery of entrepreneurship education by creating new resources for teaching and learning, staff training, employer volunteering and generating work experience that seeks to develop skills within participants that business wants. We will innovate by creating new ways of working that will develop enterprise skills. A wide variety of activity is intended including the piloting of new resources so that the targeted beneficiaries will have a say in the final project outputs. We'll listen to the learner and take their feedback. METHODOLOGY EMPLOYED The project team have been involved in developing a comprehensive plan base on critical path analysis principles. So the process has been identified as has the key tasks which others are reliant upon. RESULTS and IMPACT ➢Embedded into mainstream curriculum enterprise education to raise awareness of business start-ups and the skills needed to be a successful employee; ➢A model which allows secondary school teacher/trainers to engage with enterprise education, increasing their skills and understanding of employer need from new job entrants; ➢More inclusive a model which engages those learners with disabilities, but with the capability to successfully participate in enterprise education; ➢Increased social mobility with a model which facilitates learners facing educational difficulties, to successfully participate in enterprise education; ➢Increased stakeholder engagement with school improving career guidance and aspirations.

The GREENT project (full name: “Blended Learning Design Methodology for Education in Green Entrepreneurship at Secondary Schools”) is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the EU. It attempts to offer a long-term solution to a key pan-European challenge, related to the development of the green mindset of future generations of entrepreneurs and the need for transformation of the EU economy into a green and circular one.There are several issues defining the world today and they are likely to define the life of future generations too. Among these are climate change, the depletion of natural resources, air pollution, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, degradation of soils, and others. Exploring the reasons for them and the possible solutions from an entrepreneurial standpoint is at the heart of the GREENT project.The mission of GREENT is to create educational tools that support teachers in fostering a “sustainability-conscious entrepreneurial mindset” in their high school students. That mindset includes all the features of the entrepreneurial mindset (tolerance to risk and uncertainty, ability to accept failure and learn from it, self-directed learning, bias toward action, intentional curiosity and creative confidence), but viewed through the prism of a sustainability mindset characterized by holistic thinking, an environmental and social ethic that respects the value of all living things, responsible consumption, cooperation and teamwork, full-cost accounting, democracy, and adherence to the precautionary principle.The main aim of the project is to bridge the “gap” in the European educational systems between the need for new green skills for green jobs and entrepreneurship and the lack of adequate educational content for the development of such skills through an innovative training course for teachers in delivering green entrepreneurship education, utilizing blended learning methodology.Five organizations from the JA Europe network partnered in the successful implementation of the project: JA Bulgaria, SEN/JA Greece, JA Romania, Ungt Entreprenorskap Sogn og Fjordane (Norway), and JA Latvia. They have a strong track record in entrepreneurship education and are experienced in research, creating and delivering educational content, forming and maintaining effective networks of schools, teachers and students, as well as in collaborating strategically with public authorities in increasing the outreach of learning-by-doing digitalized programs. A strong feature of the consortium is the close relationship with the corporate sector and the extensive experience in making effective connections between schools and businesses in the form of mentorship, guest lectures, etc.The main activities undertaken in the project were:1) Desk research (http://greentproject.eu/2017/05/05/io1-desk-research-report/)2) Development of GREENT syllabus (http://greentproject.eu/2017/05/05/io2-green-entrepreneurship-syllabus/)3) Development of blended learning methodology (http://greentproject.eu/2017/05/05/io3-blended-learning-methodology-in-green-entrepreneurship/)4) Creation of GREENT sample lessons5) Creation of full set of lessons and teacher manual in green entrepreneurship (http://greentproject.eu/2017/05/05/io5-full-set-of-green-entrepreneurship-lessons/)6) Translation of developed materials into the partners’ languages7) Testing the sample and finalized lessons and delivering testing reports (http://greentproject.eu/2017/05/05/io6-testing-reports/)8) Pilot delivery in the classroom and consolidated report to summarize the results (http://greentproject.eu/2017/09/25/io7-reports-from-piloting/)9) Multiplier events – innovation camps in green entrepreneurship (http://greentproject.eu/category/events/).10) Final international conference (http://greentproject.eu/2017/09/30/the-greent-final-international-conference-inspired-all-participants-for-a-more-sustainable-life/)The most significant impacts from the project are:Teachers learned how to utilize new content (green entrepreneurship), methods (blended learning) and tools (online education platforms) to deliver high quality education. Furthermore, they improved their digital competences and their understanding for the demands of greening the economy.High school students developed green entrepreneurial mindsets, which improved their entrepreneurship, digital and language competences.A further testament to the significance of the GREENT project is the fact that it received the prestigious “Collaboration Award” during the Global Leadership Conference of JA Worldwide which was held in Atlanta, USA, in July 2017.Longer-term benefits are related to proving the appropriateness of delivering the topic of green entrepreneurship in European high schools and laying the foundation for a broader future uptake of innovative approaches, techniques and content related to circular economy and sustainable business.

<< Background >>The convergence of several trends as climate change, scarcity of raw materials, biodiversity loss and unsustainable waste management practices have put the focus on the emergency for radical change of the global economic model. In this context, the transition towards circular economy (CE) appears as one of the most viable solutions to break off with the traditional linear economic model which follows the “take-make-dispose” logic and simultaneously address the overarching environmental, social and economic challenges that our societies are facing. Education from an early age to higher education should cultivate a new vision of society and economy: circular, sharing economy and cooperative society. Developing CE education, promoting green entrepreneurship and initiatives can play a major role in achieving a sustainable global change (Gonçalves et al., 2012; Marouli, 2002).SCORE will offer the opportunity to be trained and upskilled on various relevant topics such circular economy, green entrepreneurship, and more globally, on all the questions linked with the climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution etc. The current socio-economic challenges that our societies are facing require to increase the number of prepared teachers on the mentioned topics, and that not only those that are specialised in these types of discipline. SCORE will contribute to feed to available pedagogical resources providing adapted and tailored programmes, contents, materials and e-learning tools on the topic of CE, sustainable development and climate change. The project activities will meet: i) the need to master the whole process of design, elaboration and creation of content and materials for digital format teaching and learning, ii) became more familiar and have the capacity, ability to use and introduce the multidisciplinary approach in their everyday activities, iii) experience more the international and transnational environment of work and collaboration, exchanges knowledge, know-how, practices in their respective sector of activities, and iv) develop and reinforce their networks of partners, to increase their capacity to operate jointly at transnational level, boosting internationalisation of their activities, and through exchanging or developing new practices and methods as well as sharing and confronting ideasSCORE will allow to develop and acquire knowledge and skills on the topic of CE, green entrepreneurship, and other the linked questions (climate challenges, protection of the environment, etc.). The project will increase the number of secondary schools in Bulgaria, Lithuania, France and Spain introducing CE and green entrepreneurships education. In Bulgaria, there is not a single structured educational, pedagogical and/or training programme on the specific topic of circular economy in secondary education. SCORE will contribute to enhance their digital skills, update and improve their capacity and ability to follow online courses and manage the pedagogical materials, and familiarize the students with different pedagogical methodology and approaches, but also with the transnational environment and multidisciplinary. Lastly, the project will offer a new opportunity of the target publics to extent their relations and contacts, at national and European level and, to explore the possibility of mobility, exchanges and new collaborations.<< Objectives >>In line with the objectives of the EU New Circular Economy Plan Action (2019) to achieve more circular society and climate neutrality, the project SCORE aims to contribute to the holistic effort to addressing the environmental, societal and economic challenges that our societies are facing through promoting circular economy education adapted to 15-24 age group in order to incite sustainable behaviour changes. The project will actively improve and increase young people’s understanding of the CE approach and green entrepreneurship opportunities so they can apply CE solutions both in their everyday life, future professional practices, and entrepreneurial endeavors. The main goal of SCORE project is to increase the awareness and familiarity of the targeted age group with the circular economy approach and green business as a sustainable economic model and improve the social adhesion to this alternative economic perspective through:-Designing and testing an adapted toolkit and pedagogical methodology for training the teachers of the targeted age group students in order to assure an efficient transfer of CE knowledge and skills. -Providing open and innovative learning environment (online platform), developing tailored high-quality Open Education Resources (OER), adapted documents, contents, case-studies, best practices, using problem-based methodology to introduce and teach CE approach and promote social and green business and initiatives. -Promoting circular economy thinking and mindset, multidisciplinary approach, knowledge exchange, international networking, mobility and ongoing cooperation.<< Implementation >>To achieve the project objectives, the partners agreed on a 36-month work plan structured in six work packages, including three categories of actions: 1) related to project activities, 2) project management, and iii) sharing and promotion actions.WP1 to WP4 are dedicated to set up all the defined activities which will lead to the expected project results. The main activities that will be deployed will consist in a logical sequence of tasks in order to release the defined outputs. -The PR1 will be handled in WP1 concerning the specifications of the learning contents and pedagogical methodology. -WP2 will lead to the PR2 Learning contents for implementation of diverse learning tools. Once the specifications and methodology defined in WP1 and consolidated in PR1, raw contents for the training programmes will be developed, including assessment tools. -The activities in WP3 will be dedicated to the project platform development.-Within WP4, the project consortium will assess the of pedagogical methodology, and contents. Based on the project overall analysis, and will formalise a set of relevant recommendations for the key actors and stakeholders in the form of a Guidance and recommendations report. The activities defined in WP5 will carry out all the tasks linked with the sharing and promotion strategy of the consortium, and WP6 has been structured in order to ensure a good administrative and financial management.WP6 on management will ensure the quality of the process and best practices for daily administrative and financial management and reporting.<< Results >>SCORE will have direct tangible results during the project and will be released as a final version upon its completion, mainly based on the project platform, tools, teaching methodology and contents that will be produced by the consortium. These tangible results will rely on following deliverables and will be considered as the main transferable assets:PR1: Pedagogical programmes including specifications for training, profiles and learning methodology and tools. PR2: Learning contents for implementation of diverse learning tools (OER) – training programmes, learning toolkits and modules contents.PR3: Project platform development. PR4: Assessment criteria, results of the pedagogical output of the project and recommendations. On the side of intangible results, the project will have several results: -Contribute to increasing the awareness of young people, empowering them, stimulating proactive citizens,-Contribute to widely diffusing the CE approach and mindset and promoting the integration of CE education in school curricula,-Contribute to fostering a sustainable commitment of the young generation to environmental and socially responsible behaviours,-Contribute to integrative learning process that cultivate systemic thinking.

<< Background >>The transition to digital and online education is a topic that has been part of the education debate for almost two decades. The COVID crisis, however, served as a formidable accelerator into making this real: sometimes literally overnight, education systems all over Europe had to transition from being in presence to a fully online setting. The urgency of the decisions, however, often led to adopting technological solutions and establishing digital education infrastructure in a hasty manner. From issues of privacy to availability, from accessibility of education by students in remote locations, to intellectual property barriers, systemic challenges that our university systems were already facing have been amplified by the COVID crisis. The impossibility to pass by the normal processes of public organisations meant that critical education services had to be outsourced, leading to a general weakening of higher education’s technological capacity.Perhaps most importantly, however, the current crisis has shown how the digitalisation of education is not just a technological matter. The need to stimulate innovative pedagogies has become even higher given the radical change of setting. Indeed, the massive increase in demand of technological product led to a global chip shortage and pointed the spotlight on the environmental footprint of the digitisation process.As researchers and educators, we have seen and felt the pressure to adapt to what some are already calling “the new normal”, but we think this labelling is premature. With the perspective of a future that will increasingly have to face climatic instability and the exacerbation of economic and social inequalities, we feel the urge to slow down and reflect. If education is to be a key asset in ensuring we can live to see a better future, and higher education represents both the space to break new grounds by the means of research and the highest step in forming tomorrow’s leaders, this project is the collective representation of our needs and consciences as citizens and researchers.C-FLEX positions itself as an agile, flexible consortium that has the ambition to conduct a first holistic investigation into the impacts and sustainability of digital education infrastructure, exploring what futures could be there for Europe’s Higher Education system.In 2020 and early 2021, the research world has of course investigated many questions that have been generated by this fast transition. The silo-based nature of research, however, meant that these questions have often been investigated only from an individual discipline’s point of view, underestimating cross-disciplinary and broader societal impacts. Investigations carried out in the last two years, also, have been mainly conducted by universities (that often struggle to involve NGOs, policymakers and industry in the research process) and by for-profit organisations (that have a vested interest in shaping the market).One area that we deem would benefit from more attention is the assessment and raising of awareness about the geographical, social, and economic obstacles that participants can face when accessing digital education. C-FLEX sees as fundamental to foresee and promote the active engagement of participants facing those very obstacles, explicitly addressing this element of inclusion.This consortium wishes to position itself at the intersection of disciplines, sectors and needs, to kickstart a process that holistically analyses the evolution of digital education infrastructure. This process should feed back to decision-makers, industry players and civil society, ensuring that the digital transformation of education can be a successful, sustainable driver of a better future for Europe and the whole planet.<< Objectives >>C-FLEX aims at delivering a first holistic analysis of digital education infrastructure in the context of the process of the digitalisation of education. Most importantly, the analysis conducted in C-FLEX aims to have a strong feedback into pedagogy, making the project’s learnings immediately available in the form of pedagogical materials.The general goal of the project is to investigate the impacts and sustainability of the process of creating Europe’s Digital Education Infrastructure, exploring what possible futures we could have ahead, and discussing ways to steer our institutions and countries in one direction or another. The highest priority in this sense is to make sure that future online education is open, accessible, and sustainable in the long-term future.The project sees this goal under four main Dimensions:- Technological: discussing what makes digital education technologically functional and maintainable- Environmental: quantifying the environmental impact of the process of digitalising education- Social, ethical and legal: exploring ethical and legal considerations such as privacy, accountability, fairness and freedom of choice- Pedagogical: piloting needed changes in the teaching and learning, both in results and processes, in assessment and administration C-FLEX wants to broaden the awareness to these problems, making sure that as many people as possible can understand the implications of choices made in this space. The project will ensure this can happen through a variety of outputs targeting many different types of stakeholders. The first such stakeholder we target is the one of learners, which are seen in the context of this project as tomorrow’s innovators, and even further those that will inherit the education system that we build today. Learners will be engaged with an interdisciplinary, hands-on approach, instantiating a Challenge-Based Learning methodology. Such pedagogical approach, we deem, are well-suited to make learners explore this space with their own hands. To ensure a high-quality implementation of this educational methodology and a good mapping of the project’s vision, challenges for the CBL activities are sourced from real stakeholders, engaged at three levels: in the partnership, through a dedicated partner and its network (Junior Achievement Bulgaria); in the project’s structure, through a Strategic Board; and externally, through the project’s dissemination activity. This strategy will position the project to achieve its objectives both in a top-down and in a bottom-up fashion.<< Implementation >>C-FLEX foresees a number of activities that are integral part of its implementation. We highlight here a few such activities:CONSTRUCTION OF A DIGITAL EDUCATION INFRASTRUCTURE BENCHMARKING TOOLKIT This toolkit will give institutions practical tools to assess their digital education infrastructure strategy, understand potential bottlenecks, and plan their evolution.It will be composed of an open source self-hostable web tool modelled after the HEInnovate self-assessment online tool, and a set of guidelines that can be used by decisionmakers within organisations to aid in the comparison of different digital education infrastructure solutions.MICROCREDENTIAL-AWARDING ONLINE COURSE ON THE TOPIC OF IMPACTS AND SUSTAINABILITY OF DIGITAL EDUCATION INFRASTRUCTURE As Europe reflects on the potential role of micro-credentials as a model of learning, teachers, learners and decision-makers of different backgrounds will find themselves in need to update their own knowledge in terms of digitalisation of education. C-FLEX foresees the design of a course to create a just-in-time, self-tailorable learning space for people of all backgrounds needing to plug competence gaps in their knowledge, be it because they need to select elements of infrastructure, have an entrepreneurial idea, or have a general interest in the topic. The course will initially be targeted at participants in the project’s activities, and will gradually expand its audiences.PILOTING OF AN INTENSIVE CHALLENGE-BASED COURSE IN DIGITAL EDUCATION INFRASTRUCTUREThe activities of C-FLEX culminate in a pedagogical experience that showcases the project’s vision from its content to its finest process details. With a model that is fully based on green travel, the summer school is designed to be an event with maximum added value, giving learners the chance to see with their own eyes the challenges and opportunities that the transition to digital education brings. Most importantly, however, it gives learners the opportunity to solve these challenges in an interdisciplinary group setting.The pilot summer school will also be used as a catalyst for partners to establish new exchange agreements for short-term mobility, further expanding the Erasmus+ offering available to all students in participating institutions.CONDUCTING OF REGULAR STAKEHOLDERS CONSULTATIONSAs the topic of the project doesn’t only involve Higher Education per se, the project foresees a number of consultations with an internalised Strategic Board. This will ensure that insights gathered by the consortium have a reflection in the real world and are not just fruit of desk research.Stakeholders will be asked to train the project’s staff on how these problems are normally solved in their space. Additionally, stakeholders will co-create challenges together with academic partners, and these challenges will be used in the pilot summer school as a basis for the learners’ projects, ensuring that the learners’ work can have immediate impact.A PROJECT-LONG AWARENESS-BUILDING PROCESSC-FLEX wants to ensure that the project can achieve its goals and impacts by design, so it sees the dissemination of its results as a fundamental activity. The project’s dissemination strategy will involve all levels of society and the general public, by using iterative loops in the production of the project’s results.Participants in the C-FLEX consortium designed the project so that it can be highly synergistic with many other european initiatives they are taking part in, enabling an impact strategy that is both top-down and bottom-up.<< Results >>RESULTS:Project results are divided in two main groups: Results 1 and 2 are more intellectual in nature and will dominate the project in its first part. Results 3 and 4 are more pedagogical, and will instead dominate the second part of the project.Result 1: Requirements and impacts analysis of digital education infrastructure A set of research instruments to aid in the holistic analysis of requirements and impacts of digital education infrastructure. It will produce tools and methodologies to assess the impact of digital education infrastructure and to aid institutions in mapping their requirements with implementations, as well as guidelines resulting from the project’s first implementation.Result 2: Toolkit for the benchmarking of digital education infrastructureA set of practical tools to measure an institution’s positioning in terms of DEI, and to compare different solutions/platforms/methodologies in the space of online education.NB: R2 creates practical tools, while R1 focuses on creating investigation processes that can potentially also used to design tools (as is the case in C-FLEX).Result 3: Supporting Challenge-Based Learning with microcredentialsA microcredential-awarding online course, along with curricular guidelines, giving a systemic look at the challenges and opportunities of education digitalisation, and specifically designed to support challenge-based courses in the topic of digital education.Result 4: A challenge-based learning approach to the impacts and sustainability of digital educationPedagogical tools to implement CBL courses on creating future-ready digital education infrastructure. A particular emphasis is put on interdisciplinary team work, using industry-sourced challenges, and self-tailoring of delivery. Includes a pilot implementation in the form of an intensive programme (summer school). TANGIBLE ARTIFACTS:We present here a brief selection of artifacts that the project will produce:- A set of handbooks discussing the pedagogical, technological, social and environmental implications of the digitalisation of education.- A set of investigation tools to aid in the exploration of the above.- A web-based tool (inspired by the HEInnovate self-assessment) to track HEI’s progress in developing sustainable digital education infrastructure.- A modular set of guidelines that can be used to aid local, regional, national and EU decision-makers in the comparison and adoption of competing solutions.- An online course on impacts and sustainability of digital education.- Guidelines for the integration of the online course in challenge-based learning courses.- Administrative guidelines to enable the awarding of micro-credentials for the above course.- A set of pedagogical guidelines for the creation of CBL extensive and intensive courses in the topic of the project.