Context and rationale Youth unemployment in Europe is arguably one of the most pressing socio-economic issues most member states have been grappling with in the last few years. There is growing evidence that without further action we risk a lost generation of young people, shut out of the labour market and increasingly disconnected from work and learning. Youth unemployment is now above 1 million; more than one in five young people who are in the job market are unemployed, giving an unemployment rate of 22%. Taking into account these people, the percentage of all young people who are unemployed is 14%, or about one in seven. This provides a rather accurate way of the chances of being unemployed. In the current economic climate, our project,Y2BE is designed to provide a significant contribution to young people’s skills and competences through formal and informal learning of an array of highly sought after skills, knowledge and know-how about the world of work, in an increasingly global job market. The objectives of our project are to help the students to discover and develop entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and know-how and to give them the chance to be part of the real business world. Thus they will be able to improve the local economy through creating new businesses in the near future after completing their formal education. Moreover students will benefit from improving their communication and linguistic skills and the specific entrepreneurial vocabulary, getting to know how to write a CV in the Europass format, develop their presentation skills, financial capabilities, develop a deeper understanding of aspects such as marketing and business networking. They will also have ample opportunities to develop their social and personal skills which will improve their confidence in expressing their own ideas and points of view in real life business scenarios. Number and profile of participants: The partnership has been established among eight schools, each school being represented by their their own Y2BE team of 35 to 60 students, adding up to a total of 312 students across the partnership, aged 13-16. In addition over 30 staff will also be directly involved in the planned activities. Description of activities: The activities have been carefully designed and selected to suit the needs of young people, by being both accessible and suitably challenging. These activities will enable the students involved to learn in a progressive way which will lead to the planned outcomes. We plan to give the students a great deal of ownership over their own learning, which will in turn forge and develop leadership skills and a let’s do attitude. Methodologies to be used in carrying out the project: There will be a variety of methods and methodologies used in order to reach our targets and outcomes such as: - Use of latest ICT technology and media tools and methods for a sharp, effective communication amongst partners (adults and young people) - The use of eTwinning platform and the project’s very own website - Transnational face-to-face meetings and events to manage and assess work progress and results through the project encouraging group work and peer reviews - Training sessions for teachers on how to be business enterprise coaches Description of the results and intended impact: This project has a strong emphasis on the dissemination and long term impact of its outcomes and products. There is a clear plan of dissemination of the physical materials and results produced by the project including the business plan, the feedback criteria sheet, the DVD, the brochure, the films of the oral presentations, the summaries of the meetings, the Website of the project and the feedback of the business people. Students and staff involved will impart information on local schools about the results of the project through seminars or round tables/conferences, articles written by teachers and students and published in the school newspapers, in magazines for teachers as well as in business magazines; as well as mass media, local authorities, headteachers, teachers and students invited to the international meetings. Potential longer term benefits: The activities and the results of our project are planned to be maintained after the end of the EU funding by including them as a part of our schools curricula so that we will be able now and also in the future to promote basic entrepreneurship skills among our scholars to develop employability, initiative and new business creation, develop career guidance and advice in schools, foster the use of ICT among the students in order to increase their level of digital competence, reinforce links between education and the world of work, increase our students’ academic profile suitable for a demanding and competitive labour market, promote cooperation among our schools and potential employers, local authorities and increase competence in foreign languages.