The contextThe Senior Social Entrepreneuring project works one of the most important social and educational challenges in 21st century Europe – re-activating the overwhelming social and educational potential of the increasing number of experienced seniors in society to help them build capacity to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.There is a growing population of healthy older people with the skills, financial resources and time available to contribute to economic activity through extending their working lives, including through entrepreneurship and volunteer work, which is proven to give a positive impact on a person’s mental health. Therefore, we wanted to use the project as a platform to encourage older people to be active citizens and create social innovation as an alternative to traditional public service and furthermore becoming mentors for other potential entrepreneurs, both youth and seniors.The project objectives were to mobilize teams of seniors in participating active in the communities and beyond to build capacity among them to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.The project succeeded with bringing the policy needs in a strong, systematic and sustainable, yet practical and realistic way. We mobilized groups of seniors and build-up their capacity to act as ´Social Change Brokers´ in EU communities. They identified social needs and facilitated the change process towards a concrete social solution to the problem/need identified. In the capacity building process, they learned how to be a catalyst of social change by bringing in relevant stakeholders across sectors, implementing their initiative and to make their initiative sustainable.Number and profile of participating organizationsThe consortium brought together 8 partners from 6 EU countries: ´practice partners´, ´knowledge partner´ and an experienced ´quality assurance partner´. The coordinating partner was the department of Health Care in Aarhus Municipality (Denmark), while the primary target group in this department is citizens older above 65 years. The knowledge partner was INRCA, a public national organization in Ancona with the main aim of contributing to a holistic understanding of the ageing process from a demographic, social, economic and political perspective. The quality assurance partner was Working with Europe (non-governmental), who has a lot of experience regarding EU projects by helping partner organizations create innovative ideas and support the quality of the work processes and outcomes.The rest of the partners acted as practice partners; 3 non-governmental organizations, one university in England and one public corporation in Barcelona dealing with general interests of commerce, industry and services.Description of undertaken main activitiesThe activities such as project meetings and outputs have contributed to let the partners and participants be aware of what is happening around the six local communities in the project. At the capacity-building seminars a network of European seniors were established. They have learned to act as senior social change brokers and to bring social innovation in the local community. In the end, each local community group arranged a multiplier event, where they promoted their initiatives and told the citizens in their local community about the role as a senior entrepreneur and the impact of the project.Results and impact attainedThe Erasmus+ project SSE has been an important stepping stone towards understanding the importance of seniors’ active role in the local community.The impact of the project has been very positive as the seniors took the stage and they were the main stakeholders of this project and drove the activities. In our opinion the project has been a success, which is visible by the ongoing activities and the sustainability in most of the 16 initiatives.The project creates or promotes social change in different scales and with different stakes, which helps not only the senior to feel useful, but also to be useful to others, whether it is by playing music for the local communities’ elderly or by supporting and mentoring asylum seekers to include them in the community.The plan is not only to make the 16 initiatives sustainable, but also to implement the meaning of a senior social entrepreneur into the local communities, thereby securing the meaning of a senior social change broker and how to act upon this.Our participating seniors expressed their interest in a future European project, where their new senior-driven social innovation practice can be put into further use by focusing on isolation and loneliness in both rural and urban areas.It’s worth mentioning that our French partner Pistes Solidaires applied for a KA2 Adult Education project, ARTEM, this spring at the French agency and the project was granted. Their initiative began in the Senior Social Entrepreneuring programme and now it is made sustainable by their new project.

The goal of the REAL project is to contribute to the integration of unemployed graduates into the labor market by enhancing their entrepreneurship skills and competencies. The project focused on the needs of those who wants to start their own business but did not have necessary skills and know-how. The fear of unemployment and changes in today's labor market inspired people to look for new paths to find a new work place and/or to create their own. The project's main objective is to transfer and develop of the innovative e-learning platform and blended course contents and activities focused upon entrepreneurship enhancement. The project is aiming to implement a realistic, competitive and sustainable Virtual Learning Community, which promoted a specific entrepreneurial training/mentoring program offering an integrated guidance to entrepreneurs from the early stage of motivation and idea generation through a personalized support in implementing business projects.The project partnership- 10 partners from 8 European countries - the selection is based on the geographical status, expertises and capacity of the partners. We intended to form the partnership especially from the Mediterranean countries considering that the economic chaos is affecting that part much more.The objectives of the project: The main goal of the REAL project is to help unemployed people to integrate into the labor market by becoming entrepreneurs and creating their own work place. 1- to identify the needs of the unemployed youth and labor market2- improving the level of key competences and skills, with particular regard to the young peoples' relevance for the labor market3-supporting participants in training and further training activities in the acquisition and the use of knowledge, skills and qualifications to facilitate personal development, employability and participation in the European labor market 4- fostering quality improvements, innovation excellence and internationalization at the level of participating education and training institutions, in particular through enhanced transnational cooperation 5- promoting entrepreneurship education to develop active citizenship, employability and new-business creation6-increasing participation in learning and employability between education and training providers and other stakeholders7- developing the basic competencies of target group8- developing the university - industry and labor market relations9- developing inter-disciplinary and international cooperation of the organizations from different sectorsOur results and outcomes :1- The target group needs identified;There was surveys conducted to the unemployed graduates to analyze the needs of the target group and also another survey was conducted to the industry representatives to identify the needs of the labor market 2- Entrepreneurial course materials, tools and activities transferred, translated and adapted in each piloting country; The participating institutions created on-line courses with new 6 educational modules, animation videos and e-marketing platform for new international marketing strategies. 8 power-point presentations per each module were created and they were supported by voice texts in English. The tools were translated into English, Turkish, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian and Swedish.3- E-learning platform developed with simulations, case studies and activities focused upon entrepreneurship enhancement; The entrepreneurial tools were published on the e-learning platform. The target group can register on the website to join the Online courses and use the educational Online materials4- Blended learning course organized and piloted in 3 countries for enrolling 75 participants (the participants were selected by various sectors in order to create interdisciplinary synergy.5- Training and tutoring provided to the learners’ groups; 6- 12 trainers trained in short term joint staff transnational courses/ 4 trainer per pilot groupThe trainers of the pilot groups went to the module holder institution for shot term courses, to see the best practices and share experiences for 5 days7- Booklet & Guide: participating institutions created a booklet for target group in order to show pathways to entrepreneurs. And also the activities and the outcomes of the projects were presented in this booklet8- DVD Online course and animation videos were installed on a DVD for disseminating the project to the relevant stakeholders. Additionally this DVD was provided available for those who want to take the courses after registering on the web portal9- University - industry relationships developed10- partnership culture was developed and this enhanced and promoted international and inter institutional cooperation and coordination.