Fostering entrepreneurship can be a main means to mitigate societal problems and economic growth and the capacity to cope with change in societies. Current practices of support for business development have failed by being too oriented to academic's. Even here current practices do not overcome the theory-practice gap. A more practical and pragmatic approach is needed, including face to face support and coaching. All partners have developed critical components for such a concept, but lack the resources and knowledge of other current good practices on an international level, to develop and test an innovative concept. Therefore they proposed the project. The objective of the project was to create a sustainable structure for developing entrepreneurial competences for SME with less than 5 years seniority, in production, crafts, services or ICT and for continuing support through trained coaches. To this end the project researched the best practices and innovative methods regarding business development support structures and applied the best practices identified, partner´s own knowledge and experiences in synthesizing a transferable model of such structures. MultiEntCoach proved to be innovative: IO1- the new methodologies for training entrepreneurs that were promoted and will be used by coaches in a sustainable way; IO2- the exercises and case studies that are presented, gathering European experience (PT, RO, SI, DE), with different level of development of entrepreneurial competence; IO3- a) a modern, innovative, accessible online learning resource tool was created; it motivates managers to create content, to communicate and to network in Europe; C1- the exchange of good practices in teaching entrepreneurial competences; C2 and C3 that combined the practical experience at transnat. level with opportunity for trainees to see new models of business. Participants and profile: 20 coaches selected by the partners for experience in consulting SME; 37 start-up managers with less than 5 years seniority from production, services, crafts and IT; 200 entrepreneurs with less than 5 year seniority assisted; 3480 visits of such entrepreneurs for online resources; 214 participants to multiplier events: stakeholders of SME support, potential multipliers, potential entrepren. Activities carried on in order to achieve the proposed objectives: Elaboration of 3 Intellectual Outputs: MultiENTCoach- Handbook for Coaches of Entrepreneurs (and Training Curriculum) MultiENTCoach- Handbook for Entrepreneurs (with Training Curriculum) MultiENTCoach- Online learning resources System (https://multient.erasmus-projects.eu/) 5 days of training for 20 consultants in coaching entrepreneurial competences and facilitation techniques 5 days of training for 37 entrepreneurs for developing soft entrepreneurial competences 6 multiplier events including the final conference Wide dissemination to target groups and stakeholders. Results and impact: 20 coaches trained by introducing systematic approaches for continuous professional development; 37 start-up managers trained in order to develop their soft entrepreneurial skills; opening up new learning opportunities through the practical application of entrepreneurial skills; 200 entrepreneurs assisted in order to foster their entrepreneurial spirit; Support and stimulate the flow and exchange of knowledge and best practices between coaches/ consultants and entrepren. 3480 visits for online resources 214 participants in the multiplier events Improvement of the quality and quantity of consultancy and support offers to entrepreneurs; Closer cooperation between all relevant actors, more competent entrepren. with a higher chance of surviving and thus a positive contribution to the economic development of the region. Potential business founders make up their mind to develop a business and are more qualified to do so. Methodology: Business founders with less than 5 years seniority have the possibility to profit from a sustainable support network based on the 20 trained coaches, training materials and online learning resources. Face to face training of a core group of users as well as online support contributed to start a wider community of users of relevant knowledge for junior business founders. Interactive techniques used for training the adults. Project management tools, constant monitoring of the implementation (financial and technical using working plan and risk management tools) and quality assurance for a successful project. Longer term benefits: Networked approach in community with peer entrepreneurs and supporting organizations increases the mid and long term sustainability of the businesses. Contributing to the dissemin. and mainstreaming of key concepts of European Economic Policy, as fostering entrepreneurship, particularly among young people as well as promotion of a more entrepreneurial mindset in general is one pillar of this policy.

Creative businesses, which have shown strong resistance to the crisis, represent around 3.5% of all products and services made in the EU each year and employ 6.7 million people, i.e. 3% of the European workforce. Creative businesses have demonstrated to have an important role to play in generating growth and occupation and fighting unemployment while strengthening social cohesion, particularly for young people, but also for those adults who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, who can transform their creative skills into their own business. In order to help the creative sector unlock their potential for growth and the transnational circulation of creative works and their ability to operate transnationally and reach new audiences in Europe and beyond, the EU responded with the Programme “Creative Europe”, considering the lack of efforts in providing aspiring and practicing creative people with knowledge and skills that increase their capacity to create and lead their creative entrepreneurial ventures. The general aim of the “Creative Talent factory” - CTF project is to promote self-employment and entrepreneurship in the creative sector. To achieve this goal, the CTF project has defined four objectives:•to provide digital learning opportunities for adults, including with disadvantaged background, supporting their motivation and empowering them towards access to upskilling pathways for creative entrepreneurship;•to assess and monitor learners’ achievements in order to ensure the transparency and recognition of their creative entrepreneurial competences and skills;•to provide the innovative easy-to-learn pathway for upskilling the creative entrepreneurial competences and skills needed to set up or improve the creative business;•to extend and develop educators’ competences needed for effective running the training of adult learners, including with the disadvantaged background, to become the successful creative entrepreneurs.The components of the creative sector included in the CTF project are visual and performing arts; craftsmanship; art and antiques market; fashion; music and dancing. 90 adults - learners seeking to set their own businesses or improve it in the creative sector, including adult from disadvantaged background and 30 adult educators-facilitators will participate directly in the projects piloting activities. 135 representatives of associated partners and other the stakeholders will participate in six multiplying events. In order to achieve the defined objectives, four intellectual outputs will be produced: For adult learners: •Set of OERs “Creative Entrepreneurial motivation and empowerment”;•Self-assessment Tool to assess the competences and skills of the creative entrepreneur;•E-training programme “Creative Talent Factory“;For adult educators: •E-toolkit for Adult educators “How to run “Creative Talent Factory“”.The general methodology to all four intellectual outputs is based on Open Educational Resources in order to promote the open access to developed educational tools. However, each outcome is based on the specific to this outcome methodology, including reversed training methodology with the flipped classroom learning approach; innovative concept for the training course based on easy-to-learn Bite-size Learning methodology, assessing of the competencies and skills method with providing learners with the digital badge “Creative entrepreneur”. The attractive and learner-friendly methodical approach, based on Creative Entrepreneurial Local Workshop as an innovative upskilling pathway, includes organic using of all three intellectual outputs, developed for adult learners for motivating, empowering, training and assessing their creative entrepreneurial competences and skills. The positive impact of this new upskilling pathway is expected on the participatory approach by increasing learners’ involvement to the training on creative entrepreneurship. Thus, the project contributes to achieve benchmark of 15% of learners’ participation in lifelong learning as defined in European agenda for adult learning. The impact is expected on development of competences and skills on creative entrepreneurship: 85% of learners will increase their creative entrepreneurial competencies and skills for at least 40% after the finalising the training course, and the measure of this impact will be ensured by the assessment tool. It is also expected that at least 60% of learners will show their immediate interest to develop the Action plans for establishing the creative business. The general impact is foreseen on better integration of this target group to the labour market and society, and it will contribute to the achievement of ET 2020 benchmark of increasing employment rate by 75%.

Context/background of the project: The INSPIREUS! project, offers an ambitious and forward-looking outlook on strengthening female entrepreneurship. Supporting female entrepreneurs, especially at the start of their entrepreneurial paths, is crucial in realising the creation of more companies led by women on an EU level, whereas, at the same time helping more women in the EU join the active workforces. Across the globe, women participate in paid economic activities less than men. When women do participate, they often work in lower-paying jobs and sectors and have less access to social safety nets. At the same time, it is estimated that closing the gender gap in the workforce would add 28 trillion USD to the global GDP, and that’s only counting the monetary gains, not the human rights and other benefits. For these reasons, we all need to work together to support and remove barriers to women’s economic recovery and empowerment, and entrepreneurship in its various forms is a powerful catalyst to make this a reality. Entrepreneurship can generate jobs for women and their peers and help them tackle EU & worldwide challenges faced. Objectives: The project overall scope is to transform young female entrepreneurs in terms of realizing the connection between internal motivation & business creation. The specific objectives of the project are: a) Develop an inspiring and motivational programme which will offer hands-on experiences to women; b) Investigate the psychological factors of female entrepreneurship, with particular focus on personality and motivational factors; c) Create tools helping future women entrepreneurs to achieve self-awareness; d) Create a community of women entrepreneurs from all over EU. The collaborative environment creates a new “culture” and a network of women entrepreneurs. Women are important agents of change, and harnessing the potential of women entrepreneurs will be crucial for the sustainable and inclusive recovery of economies and societies, especially useful in challenging periods, such as the era of Covid-19. Number, type & profile of participants: The direct target group of the project were future women entrepreneurs (25-40 years) who have developed some skills and professional expertise taking into account their professional experience, but they find themselves without motivation to start a business. These women could be also employed young women who want to improve their soft skills, competencies, entrepreneurial skills, communication skills, etc. The main target group of the project was involved to the project activities from the very early stage: starting with a survey and analysis for the development of a competencies matrix and policy recommendations report (IO1), testing the self-assessment tool & pilot phase of the educational programme (IO2 & IO3), best-testing the training platform (IO5) and providing useful recommendations for improvement. The pilot participants representing the project's direct target group, have also participated to the various multiplier events, helping to spread awareness of the project (89 participants in total). Activities: The project partners have delivered 5 IOs, a very successful C1 training activity, and other project related activities falling under general project management actions. Results & impact: The final evaluation report of the project, proves that the quality of the products delivered in INSPIREUS! is high, whereas the relevance of the topic and the high responsiveness of the target group, were amongst the biggest strengths of the project. In particular, the participation in pilot training as well as registered interest, the high level of partner collaboration in developing all project IOs in full quality, prove the success of the project consistently. Activities such as the C1 hosted in Portugal, have proven to be very useful to consolidate the in depth discussion of the respective topics, to meet stakeholders, to form transnational teams and professional communities, get insight to relevant European environments, as in this case the start-up ecosystem in Lisbon, and therefore strengthen the European dimension of the project. Longer-term benefits: Partners should extend their focus on elaborating the women-specific aspects of the programme, such as specific business and networking culture and mutual encouragement. The project can serve as a useful basis platform, under which sustainable utilisation of the products to further design the material in a concise and easy to understand manner. Moreover, the partners can continue to consider on a deeper level the cultural and economic differences in the partner countries, where in some cases discrimination of women is implicit but significant, while in others the good career opportunities in employment slow down the entrepreneurial aspirations of women; thus it is interesting to expand INSPIREUS! to a larger-scale project.

Enhancing digital competences is one of the priorities under the Europe 2020 strategy; consequently, the priorities in Erasmus+ programme emphasizes developing basic and transversal skills, and among them digital skills in all fields of education and training, using innovative and student-centred pedagogical approaches and developing appropriate assessment and certification methods, based on learning outcomes and enhancing ICT uptake in teaching and learning, through the support of learning and access to open educational resources (OER) in the education and training fields.This project recognizes the importance and necessity of improving the system of permanent teacher training in the field of digital competencies. The project is dedicated to the development of a set of open educational resources (OER) for training teachers in the field of digital competence, and assessment of their knowledge at the end of the seminar. The important goal of this project is developing a system of training and assessment with minimal financial investments by introducing a peer review system. Also, project will enable education authorities to ensure a number of digitally competent teacher and monitor their learning progress.Project is based on very successful Slovenian project called “eSchooling” (eEducation) in which more than 23.000 teachers form 674 schools (80% of all Slovenian schools) were involved in teacher training. Part of the project was also development of digital competence path and application of the digital competent teaching in class. Still, in the project eLearning content was not prepared.In this new project methodology of teacher training of the previous project and experience will be redefined and improved and the gap of eLearning content will be filled. Final coursework will be in-service oriented, to show the ability of use of digital competencies in local environment and own classes. Furthermore, so far existing practice of expensive commissions’ assessment will be avoided by introducing a peer review system. In this way, the costs will be minimized and self-sustain project’s results will be enabled. In the pilot phase of the project, six teachers per country will be trained in all five of digital competencies (Information, Communication, Content creation, Safety on internet and Problem solving) and skilled as a further trainer of teachers, called also Country digital competence promoters.Also, dissemination of project’s results is foreseen, which will be provided thru wide educational network of the partners in the project. While the two Slovenian partners will provide methodology for digital competence training and development of tools, other partners will implement new resources in their school networks. Croatian partner is Agency for Vocational Education and Training and Adult Education, a key stakeholder in Croatia in the field of VET and Adult Education, Spain partner is training and professional qualifications body for the metal sector in the Asturias province and Turkish partner is Provincial education directorate in Konya. This way, project’s results will be addressed to a large number of teachers, trainers and all relevant stakeholders in partners country.Costs of preparing, developing, maintaining and running of a web portal can be very high (fees for authors, designers, developers of multimedia content, preparation of assessment to a cost for running the portals, on-line tutoring, help to a learners etc.). This project, thru all activities, especially peer review system, eliminates high costs and at the same time introduce training in the field of digital competence which is very important for the modern educational system.