Fostering green social innovation and social entrepreneurship in school education

<< Background >>In recent years, social entrepreneurship, a subdiscipline within the field of entrepreneurship, has gained increased attention from entrepreneurship scholars. It involves the recognition, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities that result in social value -the basic and long-standing needs of society- as opposed to personal or shareholder wealth. However, regardless the value that social entrepreneurship has for the European society as a guide for solving environmental problems, schools in many European countries are slowly embedding social entrepreneurship in their curriculum.<< Objectives >>The INITIATION project aims to cultivate the social innovation and social entrepreneurship mind-set of high schools and their motivation to become more community oriented and be actively involved in designing solutions for environmental problems that their local societies are facing. Thus, high school students and teachers are the main beneficiaries of the project.<< Implementation >>To achieve the aforementioned objectives, INITIATION implemented the following activities and produce relevant results: A1. We have designed a methodological framework and a curriculum (Result 1) for high school students’ education and training in social entrepreneurship and social innovation for solving environmental problems adaptable to local/regional contexts. A2. We have developed tailor made learning resources (Result 2) for the effective participation of high school students in the provision of solutions to environmental problems by applying the model of social entrepreneurship. A3. We have developed a web-based Digital Platform for Schools Social Entrepreneurship (Result 3) to be used as a tool that actively supports and in order to develop high schools students’ social entrepreneurship and social innovation thinking. A4. We have piloted the curriculum, learning resources and digital platform at 4 national pilots. Prior to the pilots, we have developed the teachers’ handbook (Result 4) and we have trained the high schools teachers to gain skills & knowledge on how they could effectively support their students to be involved in social entrepreneurship endeavors. A5. We have made recommendations for the exploitation of the proposed approach of INITIATION project and its results (Result 5). Moreover various multiplier events took place in Greece, Cyprus, Estonia and Italy, as well as a short training for high school teachers in Palermo, Italy.<< Results >>The project’s concrete output and results were the following: R1. The training methodological framework and a multidisciplinary curriculum for the development of SE competences of HSS based on practice-based pedagogies, active learning, design and creative thinking, team working and transformational learning. R2. Learning resources tailored to the needs and characteristics of high school students and the promotion of microlearning (be short, relevant, contextualized) and practice-based training. R3. The web-based Digital Platform for Schools Social Entrepreneurship that supports high schools among EU in order to explore learning resources through mini games, develop virtual social enterprises aiming to solve environmental problems, and best practices promoted amongst European schools. Moreover, high schools were provided with the opportunity to connect and collaborate with the real social entrepreneurship ecosystem at local/regional and even European level, creating communities of practice. R4. The teacher’s handbook (including learning resources) supported them for the efficient integration of SE in their schools and how this could be used to provide sustainable solutions to environmental problems. R5. The guide with recommendations for the adoption and exploitation of the INITIATION approach and relevant results, by high schools, educational authorities, and policy makers. Through the proposed intervention, students under the guidance of their teachers, gained the necessary knowledge for developing social entrepreneurship and social innovation mind-sets to provide sustainable solutions to environmental problems. Moreover, teachers gained the necessary competences to support their students to implement the entire process from the identification of environmental problems to the setup of social entrepreneurship endeavors. The project benefits actors of the social economy ecosystem (HEIs, social enterprises, SE policy makers, organizations supporting SE, etc.) through cocreation of knowledge and exchange of expertise with school communities and inspiration from fresh ideas coming from future social entrepreneurship actors on solving environmental problems. Last but not least, national, regional and local education authorities, as well as policy makers, increased their ability to exploit ready-to-use tools and resources to develop strategies for the effective integration of social entrepreneurship in secondary education.