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GREEN MENTOR Fostering green entrepreneurship thro..
GREEN MENTOR Fostering green entrepreneurship through an innovative ECVET curriculum for the new professional profile of Mentor for Green Entrepreneurs
Start date: Oct 1, 2015,
End date: Sep 30, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
New companies, especially SMEs, represent the most important source of new employment in Europe: they create more than 4 million new jobs every year. To bring Europe back to growth and higher levels of employment, Europe in general, but the countries of GREEN MENTOR project in particular (Spain, Austria, Hungary and Ireland), need more entrepreneurs. The transition to a green economy offers great potential opportunities for them. This is leading to a new concept of entrepreneurship named “green entrepreneurship”, which refers to business and social projects contributing to social changes towards sustainable patterns of consumption and lifestyles in population.
Nonetheless, two factors are restricting the potentiality of green entrepreneurship in Europe. Firstly, the barriers that job-seekers who are motivated to start up and run businesses often face, including a lack of professional or business skills and mentoring possibilities. Secondly, entrepreneurship community is not specifically inclined towards environmental issues and opportunities while simultaneously the people engaged in the environment sector are not knowledgeable about the basic concepts of entrepreneurship. Therefore, it is necessary to foster linkages between both fields.
According to the European Commission, unemployed workers with professional skills, women and young people are specific groups with greatest potential for entrepreneurship and they should be specially supported. Mentors have a fundamental role in supporting entrepreneurship. They usually assist entrepreneurs to develop the specific skills and knowledge they require. The emerging new phenomenon of Green Entrepreneurship is generating a growing demand of new professionals equipped with the skills necessary to support the entrepreneurial activities combined with the specific domain of the environmental areas: a Mentor for Green Entrepreneurs.
GREEN MENTOR aims to design and elaborate innovative VET contents and products to encourage the new professional profile of Mentor for Green Entrepreneurs, identifying and developing the competences, methodologies and tools that Mentors for Green Entrepreneurs requires to effectively support green entrepreneurship in Europe through VET.
To this purpose, five partner organizations - VET providers, companies and entrepreneurial and research centers – from four Ireland, Hungary, Austria and Spain shall work together to:
- identify the knowledge, skills and competences that Mentors for Green Entrepreneurs requires to effectively support green entrepreneurship in Europe through VET (Output 1 – State of the art report);
- increase transparency and mobility of Mentors for Green Entrepreneurs by means of recognition and validation of competencies based on the ECVET tools and methodology (Output 2 – ECVET Curriculum);
- design innovative contents and methodologies to promote green entrepreneurship in VET (Output 3 -GREEN MENTOR Handbook)
- train and up skill mentors working on VET centers, public institutions and in the industry, on new pedagogies and practical tools to support unemployed workers, women and young people in green entrepreneurship (Output 4 - GREEN MENTOR Toolbox and Output 5 - GREEN entrepreneurship Video lessons);
- promote and facilitate access to mentors, VET providers and other relevant stakeholders to the innovative VET products developed by the project (Output 6 - GREEN MENTOR-Pedia).
The main target users and beneficiaries of the project are mentors and coachers working in VET centers, in the industry and in public and private entities promoting entrepreneurship and/or providing career support to disadvantage groups. Green entrepreneurs, unemployed workers, women and young people motivated for entrepreneurship will be direct beneficiaries of the project. Stakeholders and policy makers active in the fields of entrepreneurship and/or and sustainability at local, regional, national and European level will take advantage of the project results.
During the life time of GREEN MENTOR project, the partnership will directly involved 64 VET mentors, 100 entrepreneurs, 140 participants on research activities and 405 stakeholders, direct users and beneficiaries of the project activities and products. A wider audience, of a minimum of 1.000 recipients, will be reached at local, regional, national and European level through the planned dissemination activities.
GREEN MENTOR shall improve the entrepreneurship education in VET system by offering innovative approaches and contents. The project will have a direct impact in the improvement of the skills that mentors require to effectively support green entrepreneurship, providing them with innovative tools and resources to support unemployed workers, women and young people in green entrepreneurship.
The long term impact envisaged is a strengthening of the VET system and programmes to fully exploit the potential benefits of green entrepreneurship to create new jobs in Europe.