SARA project aims at improving the support provided to female SME innovation processes by testing and developing a new model in the innovation ecosystem. In Europe, there are 23 million SMEs with an average loss of 3.1% in turnover due to low liquidity and a lack of innovative products. Women make up 52 % of the total European population but only 34.4 % of the European Union (EU) self-employed and 30 % of start-up entrepreneurs. Innovation Agencies strive at keeping the pace of SME innovation support demand, but their programs are not gender-oriented. Starting from the main idea “It takes a village to raise a child” (African proverb that means that an entire community of people must interact with children to grow in a safe and healthy environment), SARA will develop a new model to support Innovation Agencies in better gender-oriented activities. SARA responds to Europe's indications to develop and test a model for smart villages (accessibility, sustainability, new entrepreneurship), and it supports the co-design of new tools for female entrepreneurship by involving smart villages as an unusual place to create innovative enterprises for a better work-balance. Through this, promoting new forms of innovation and entrepreneurship proactively as suggested by the call “for a better innovation to SMEs”, Work Program 2018-2020. The project will use the peer learning methodology promoted by the INNOSUP-05-2018-2020 (Twinning) involving several regional innovation agencies with complementary skills. The partners will exchange knowledge and experience and develop appropriate local case studies (achieving a "learning by doing" process). The joint work of the project partners together with peer learning will produce a Design Options Paper for the implementation of local initiatives to develop a " Smart Villages an unusual place for women entrepreneurship " and related innovation support services and will promote an improvement in the role of Innovation Agency more gender-oriented.

According to the European Commission’s report on unemployment, in 2015, more than 6,6 million young people (aged 15-24 years) were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEETs) in the EU. In addition, half of the unemployed people are currently long-term unemployed, that is, unemployed for more than 12 months. As a result of this situation, poverty and social exclusion are affecting an increasing number of young people. However social enterprise, can reverse this tendency. Social enterprise creates sustainable growth by considering environmental impact and people and social cohesion. The social economy and social enterprises have managed to overcome economic and financial crisis, demonstrating the ability to overcome through social innovation. Indeed, a report on Social enterprise and social economy, endorsed during the 11th GECES (2016), shows that: in 2010, the social economy provided work to 14.5 million Europeans and, according to the latest estimates, it currently accounts for 10% of jobs in the EU and 8% of EU GDP. Nevertheless, young social entrepreneurs lack specialised training, visibility, support networks and often need motivational, technical and financial support. The project is needed, not only to give them the necessary skills and tools to carry out their ideas, but also to prepare them for a rapidly changing world, in which traditional jobs tend to disappear or to evolve. Learners should be given the opportunity to develop general skills such as problems solving, decisions making and risks assessing, which employers value. Our project will target people among 15-29 years old, both those who want to learn how to strengthen soft skills which are particularly sought-after by employers, and young would-be entrepreneurs who will be supported through a methodology already tested with success in more than 5 European countries. The Social SME Academy project aims to promote social entrepreneurship among young people by fostering their creativity and giving them support in starting up their entrepreneurial ideas through a Business Incubator Coaching Programme. The 24 months project is composed of 4 main parts. 1. Initially, partners will develop an Online Handbook on Societal Challenges faced by partners’ countries, which analyses current trends in Social Entrepreneurship, its diffusion in Europe (with particular focus on partners’ countries) and define the research basis for the development of the Social Entrepreneurship Manual (O2).The Handbook will be uploaded to the online platform as OER. 2. In the 2nd phase, on the base of O1, The Social Entrepreneurship Manual will be developed, to indicate steps that young people have to follow in order to become social entrepreneurs. The manual will including also a solid needs assessment which analyses the views of young people and youth workers at a European and national level, starting from the existing know-how based on the previous experience of the partners which developed another similar project together, desk researches & practical experience of the partners. 3. In the 3rd phase, 50 young aspiring entrepreneurs will participate to the BUSINESS INCUBATOR COACHING PROGRAMME that will be organised in the partners’ countries. Young people from all over Europe will be assisted during their startup phase, through direct and online mentoring and tutoring, in order to shape their business ideas in the social field and develop their hard and soft skills. 4. In the 4th phase, Partners will develop a number of 10 video tutorials (2 X each partner) based on the training materials used for the pilots and the Manual of Best Practices (O2). These videos will be uploaded to Social SME Academy website and on the YouTube channel and then they will be disseminated thanks to a strong online campaign. The videos will be used to strengthen the relationship with our target group of young people and attract more potential users by approaching them in a direct and practical way. The project Social SME Academy is based on an innovative methodology for startups and early-stage enterprises, providing support and access to the world of social entrepreneurship, thanks to integration of benefits offered by the Business Incubator Coaching Programme, containing useful training and inspiring resources, and those of BTFJCM (Bridging to the Future Job Creation Model) methodology. The project offers strong impact towards youth willing to undertake entrepreneurial experience in social field by empowering their skills and competences and supporting them in creation of new businesses. INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS • IO1 - Online handbook on Societal Challenges in each partner Country • O2 - Youth Social Entrepreneurship Manual & Self-assessment test for would-be Entrepreneurs • O3 - Startup Accelerator & Business Incubator Coaching Programme • O4 - SSME Academy Video Tutorials MULTIPLIER EVENTS • National Dissemination Workshops in each participating country

The FUNDCELERATOR project will aim at developing a new fund raising support methodology targeting innovative and high-growth potential SMEs operating in markets characterized by long time-to-market paths (typically more than 3 years, such as in biotech, medical devices, materials, cleantech, aeronautics, etc.). Based on their respective experience, knowledge and already developed fund raising support tools and methodologies, the 4 involved innovation support organizations will make use of the “Twinning advanced” methodological approach to collaboratively build and test an improved fund raising acceleration support programme dedicated to the target group SMEs, relying also, in a systemic mode, on all the existing fund raising support services provided by other regional private or public stakeholders. As part of the project, the regional innovation support agency from Aquitaine (ADI, France), the Baden-Württemberg regional innovation and business support organization (BWCON, Germany), the Dublin Business & Innovation Centre (DUBLIN BIC, Ireland) and the regional business and innovation incubator from Murcia (CEEIM, Spain) will experiment the new enhanced fund raising support methodology and evaluate its performance and impacts on beneficiaries (adequacy to their needs, service quality and efficiency) while beginning to apply and to test the new approach with 8 to 10 SMEs (at least 2 per partner). As a result, the new improved fund raising support methodology will be documented in a Design Option Paper (DOP), as a guide to be disseminated into other innovation support organisations, helping them at implementing the new designed programme, providing them recommendations, returns on experience and performance results.

The objectives of the project „job developer: from job creation to competence development“ was to set impulses in the reduction of the high unemployment in Europe by adapting vocational educational training and career counselling in the EU to the labour markets‘ conditions and requirements in the respective countries.These activities of adaptation are achieved by the education/training of so-called „job developers“, who identify the qualification requirements in cooperation with youths and young adults to create new employment opportunities, and work out a plan for individual professional development. This was achieved with the means of the application of the instruments „employment radar“ and „talent diagnosis“ – resp. the country-specific adaptation of these instruments – developed by SHS/minipreneurs GBM. Young adults were encouraged and enabled by the support and under the tutelage of a skilled/trained „job developer“ to detect employment opportunities, to create jobs on their own as well as to deduce the respective dimensions of requirements by analyzing the local employment opportunities on the one hand, and their interest, knowledge, and skills on the other hand. By comparing the qualification requirements with the present talents as well as the local training opportunities, on the one hand further trainings may be advised and on the other hand gaps in the existing training programmes may be identified.Thus, the project renders it possible to adapt training activities with (local) labour-market trends in an early stage and specific way and to achieve a lasting change effect. This may be effected i. a. by the adaption of curricula in the vocational training and development as well as by career counselling. At the same time, the participants gain first practical learning experience in the field of self-employment especially by the trend and market analysis in the context of the employment radar and by a subsequent expert hearing.The project’s core was to qualify the staff in the acquired partner organizations in Hungary, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and Lithuania as multipliers and thus to enable them to provide necessary structures for the concept’s adaptation and implementation. With their expertise and as coordinators of the local activities, the partners essentially contribute to the project’s success. In Hungary and Bulgaria, the chamber of commerce, and in Lithuania the Chamber of foreign Trade were won as project partners. In Greece, a research firm as well as a business consultancy and in Spain the European Business Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship were attracted as partners. Besides, in addition to the Institute for Work Science (IAW) at the Ruhr University of Bochum, the SHS/minipreneurs GBM also participated as a German para-partner.They had developed the concept of the employment radar and the talent diagnosis and supervised the initiated qualification, adaptation and implementation of the concept by the European partners as experts.In the first step, one to two persons per partner country were trained in the context of the kick-off-meeting and a five-day multiplier training in the fields of the concept’s transfer and adaptation. On the basis of all project activities, the consortium additionally worked out a series of intellectual outputs that shall be applied beyond the project and will be accessible to third parties and thus contribute to the project’s effectiveness and sustainability. This comprises on the one hand the translated documents concerning the application of the concept and the respective publicity materials, and on the other hand the further development of the employment radar and its potential and resistance analysis that yield to country-specific conditions. In addition, five modules were developed and evaluated, whose completion ensues a qualification as a „job developer“. This qualification as a „job developer“ shall be established as a recognised certification programme in the each EU country. The modules‘ contents comprise basic social skills, i.e. competences which are necessary for leadership and the encouragement of encounter groups, the creation of an employment radar including the implementation of a talent diagnosis, digital competences field of social media for entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial creativity , and cultural mindfulness and Cooperation, especially networking for entrepreneurs.In all, by the training of multipliers, by the qualification as a „job developer“, who did not actually exist in this form before, and by the local implementation as well as the development of intellectual outputs, the project will contribute to means of creating new jobs involving the promotion of educational training and career counselling matching with the current trends on the labour markets.

In view of the fact that youth unemployment is high in the EU, the planned project aimed at promoting the consideration of self-employment in vocational education. Therefore, it was benefited from the emerging synergy effects of the cooperation between youth and (ex-) managers from the age group 55+ in entrepreneurship projects. For this purpose an analysis of the potentials in terms of entrepreneurial thinking and transaction of young adults in the age of usually 15-26 years is conducted. To recruit the young adults a cooperation with, among others, (vocational) schools, high schools, chambers, career centers and employment agencies was arranged. The implemented diagnostic tool has been developed, tested and evaluated in the context of the Project “Losleger”. The tool assesses to what extend competences, attitudes and skills are given which are necessary for business formation or running a company. This analysis of potentials can be seen as a special form of career counseling. The analysis’ results were presented to the participants in a constructive way in professional and individual feedback talks. Subsequent to the feedback talks young people which were identified as having entrepreneurial potentials were promoted by entrepreneurship education. This promotion included not only competence development programs but also working with an older employee in the age of 55+ as a mentor who assisted with his/her experience-based knowledge. To implement this, a special concept, the founders’ workshop, was developed and tested. The concept is based on experiences of the German Founder Prize for Students, especially on the student enterprises. This special methodological-didactic form of qualification stimulated the youth to deploy their potentials and to use the emerging synergy effects, which originate from the different perspectives of the two involved groups. For recruiting the older managers so called multipliers which come from organizations, schools, and career centers were used. The parallel, but country-specifically adapted implementation of the two projecttools (potential analysis and founder workshop) in the countries, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Spain, it was shown that this concept of the project enterprise+ can be used successfully in a EU-wide context.The learning philosophy the project is based on is the focus on strengths. This approach was beneficial for the competence development of both the youth and the older employees. The reason is that the necessary effort for further developing strengths is significantly smaller and therefore more promising than transforming weaknesses to strength. The talentscouts (for the potential analysis) as well as the mentors (for the founders’ workshop) were trained in the project’s course. Therefore the specifically needed competencies to conduct their tasks successfully were identified at first. One of these was the ability to give constructive feedback. These tasks were dependent on the multiplier and could include initiating, conducting and evaluation the analysis of the potentials and the founders’ workshops in a specific country, as well as coaching the youth. Following the identification, self-learning units which support the multipliers in their work were developed on the basis of the different experiences made during the project in the countries. In sum the project aimed at initiating and implementing projects which are conducted by youth and older employees together to contribute to a reduction of youth unemployment. To reach this aim motivated and competent partner organizations in the named countries where won which supported the success of the project with their expertise and their local coordination of the project. In Germany it is the chair of Economics and Economic Education of the University of Duisburg-Essen, which supported the project with the tool for the analysis of potentials. Furthermore the organization “Alt hilft Jung” helped the success of the project with their expertise in the cooperation of youth and older employees. In Hungary and Bulgaria the chamber of commerce, in Lithuania the chamber for foreign trade could be won as partners. The Greek partners are on the one hand a research institute and on the other hand a consultancy and the Spanish partner is the European corporate center for innovation and entrepreneurship.