Empowering Green Entrepreneurship

The project application stemmed from a shared vision among partners and concerns for Europe's future. The objective was to train and promote green skills in the new generation of entrepreneurs, al...

The partnership, largely experienced in the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs program, aimed to reshape business mindsets and champion Green practices among new entrepreneurs. Their vision was to instill a Green Business mindset in the next generation. The key objective was cultivating Green Entrepreneurship through training for new entrepreneurs, startups, and SMEs, shaping a sustainable future. They aimed to integrate Green practices into standard business concepts, including an eco-friendly 'Green Business Plan' template. Offering both online and presential training sessions, the partnership aimed to equip entrepreneurs from all participating countries (Cyprus, Romania, Spain, Italy and Greece) with skills to merge traditional practices with green methods. Their overarching goal was to create an inspiring training course rooted in Green Entrepreneurship, providing new entrepreneurs with Green Skills, Knowledge, and motivation for eco-friendly startup operations. Aligned with the EU Green Deal for climate neutrality by 2050, the partnership stressed disseminating project results to key stakeholders at EU, national, and regional levels.

During the project execution, we have developed a series of activities, some of them related to achieving results and others more associated with the promotion and execution of the project and its outcomes. We created a 'Green Entrepreneurship Guide' specifically tailored for new entrepreneurs and startups, emphasizing green skills and sustainability, in line with the policies outlined in the EU Green Deal. Exactly, the guide includes 12 topics where each partner contributed with his experience and insights to develop the guide, ensuring adherence to Environmental Conformity practices. The guide incorporates motivational methodologies to inspire and guide both new and upcoming entrepreneurs toward embracing green practices and acquiring green skills. An online platform (https://egeproject.eu) was developed to host Green Entrepreneurship e-course based on “Green Entrepreneurship Guide”, and including inspirational green practices and videos, interviews of best practices from each partner. As well as, the platform was hosted our project information, material and results, serving as both an information repository and a dissemination platform. Dissemination activities have been done through the social networks because the platform was linked to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin in order to achieve higher exposure for the project results. A dissemination & Communication Plan was designed encompassing the dissemination strategy and promotional activities https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iY1HnSgr3r6O7nmpseQQ_kxXBqs7Q1lmbGZb3YEA7iE/edit Learning activities have been done. The first one where the LTTA which was a staff training course with the aim the enhancement of knowledge of the participants and training skills both in the subject area and in training capacity, and exchange of experience and best practices among trainers. The second learning activity was a pilot test. The pilot testing was done to implement the course locally, targeting new, to become entrepreneurs and startups, in a way to achieve multiplier effect, and “train the trainer effect”. The pilot test was conducted in two formats: virtually and presential. Completing the e-course through the platform allowed us to observe user interaction and assess the satisfaction level. Presential workshops provided us with more direct feedback regarding interest and the content of the course's topics. The number of participants who underwent training during the pilot test was 587, with 307 participating online. The remaining participants (279) received face-to-face training through one of the 12 workshops organized by various partners. Another activity carried out was 4 multiplier events, as was planned, to achieve the multiplier effect which was an important parameter of our project since we aimed to have maximum impact on promotion and dissemination. We invited local and international stakeholders, in order to achieve maximum coverage and powerful for to generate a “Green Business” mindset among future generations. The management activities that have been carried out include tasks related to organization and participation in meetings, monitoring and evaluation, preparation of reports, etc. Monitoring and evaluation activities have been done following the Quality Assurance Plan developed as part of the project in collaboration with the various partners (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1JmFeqfA8ggr1ccr_-1wabfbJBW1ZXyHp). To achieve all these activities, meetings have been done along the project, exactly three meeting have been carried on presential and four meetings were online. All these activities are reflected in the project's Google Drive (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1w83qVDx8JcKhzFhUwktY2YAbe-FbH-YC?usp=drive_link).

The main outputs of the project are three: the “Green Entrepreneurship Guide”, the “Green Entrepreneurship course” with audiovisual support, and finally the free Online Educational Platform where all project results and material will be uploaded. The “Green Entrepreneurship Guide” (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1wSdQ8rdn3IjsZY-JONiC5Y-htCIxYO4W) was an inspirational document that partners drafted together to encourage the future entrepreneurs to include environmental skills and green practices in their future projects. The Green Entrepreneurship Guide includes information on EU Green Deal policies and other Green Skills; and an innovative Green Business Plan model designed to set environmental protection and sustainability standards, aspiring to become a new trend for EU entrepreneurs. Specifically, our guide provides students formation on the following topics: From Farm to Fork, Sustainable Industry, Building and energy, Clean Energy, Corporate Sustainability, Green Business Plan, Industry 4.0, Circular Economy, Sustainable cities, Sustainable mobility, Biodiversity, and Eliminating Pollution. The second output was the development of inspiring audiovisual material and interviews on Green and sustainable Business practices in order to encourage new entrepreneurs and startups to apply green practices in their future business ventures. This content, along with sections of the guide, constitutes the 'Green Entrepreneurship Course' serving as a valuable training tool. Each partner contributed with material and inspirational green practices derived from each training topic. The chosen audiovisual format includes PowerPoint presentations to summarize the training content of each chapter and case studies (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1U5lnld_R1tMmn1QZ3DyFPx9G_L2XaBuZ). Additionally, video was used to create content related to interviews, business practices, and practical cases. All the developed material is in the English language. In some cases, the material is in the official language of one of the partners, but in all these cases, subtitles in English are provided. Access to the videos is facilitated through two channels. Firstly, a YouTube channel has been created to disseminate all the created videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDQSl3DGoa8YyKSmPQzRViA). The platform allows all users who watch the videos to choose subtitles in any language, making the videos available in the different languages of the partners, including Catalan. On the other hand, the videos, along with the guide, can be accessed through the platform created for online training, as explained in the results of Output 3. The last project output was the open and free online platform (https://egeproject.eu), accessible to anyone interested in Green Entrepreneurship and best green practices. The platform hosts all project materials, the guide, and the e-course, remaining available at least for the next five years. The platform showcases the best Green Business practices from each partner country, presenting environmentally friendly business ideas as inspirational material. At the end, all partners did a pilot testing with an amount of people in order to test and improve the course. All the results achieved are available in six languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Greek and Catalan. Catalan was not included in the initial project, but it is the official language of Catalonia, where the partner CCIGirona is from. As well as, the deliverables of the outputs are accessible in the Erasmus+ Results Platform (https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/projects/search/details/2021-1-ES01-KA220-VET-000028055).