Innovative development of entrepreneurial skills of youth

One of the groups most affected by crisis are the young people, to whom we should pay special attention. Increasing the willingness of career starters and young people to venture and the support of the acquisition of competences related to it can give a boost to the rise of the economic activity of the new generation, and thereby, indirectly, it may contribute to the economic role-taking of young people. Therefore, with the project “Innovative Development of Entrepreneurial Skills of Youth” (INDESK) we reviewed the policies, programmes and best practices that help to develop youth entrepreneurship, organised discussion forums and surveys with the participation of target groups and converted their results into a newly developed innovative blended learning programme which supports youth entrepreneurship, in particular by means of awareness raising of young people and development of their entrepreneurship competencies.Five partners from four countries – TREXIMA Bratislava (Slovakia), LENO Consulting (France), Endurance (Netherlands), Human Profess (Hungary) and Teamwork for a Better Future Veľký Meder (Slovakia) – implemented the following main activities: 1. identified programmes to develop youth entrepreneurship, including different methodologies in the field of education, tools of active labour market policies for increasing business support and employability of young people as well as mentoring programmes for this target group in the partner countries (development of an international comparative analysis); 2. organised local discussion forums with relevant stakeholders in the labour market on rising business literacy of young people, coupled with the questionnaire survey, and created international recommendations for the development of youth entrepreneurship on their basis; 3. created, tested and disseminated an innovative modular (face to face and online) training based on international experience to promote the integration of young people into the labour market through business; and 4. extracted instructions on how to implement an innovative training programme in various institutions which are summarised in the Project Handbook.The part of training programme can be implemented through the e-learning platform: https://moodle.business-skills.eu/. Its aim is to focus primarily on those who want to start doing business; as well as those who do not immediately want to start doing business but are interested in entrepreneurship. The developed curriculum has 10 separate modules, which make up the individual steps on the way to doing business from creating a business idea to practical steps of launching a real company.The intention is that the training programme should be preceded by other formal business education, since the programme is intended primarily to discover and learn about the concept of entrepreneurship, but also to develop the key competences of a start-up entrepreneur such as creativity, communication skills or brand building. And although it is possible to go through the e-learning platform using self-study materials, normally, input of a supervisor or a teacher is important to explain the subject, to discuss it, to practice or to provide feedback. Individual modules can also be used separately according to the focus and needs of the respective educational institution. Project results are summarized in the Project Handbook which provides instructions on how to implement such training programme in a multitude of institutions which can have a positive impact on introduction of an effective training and/or incorporation of innovative features into education programmes supportive of development of youth entrepreneurship. The project activities have reached out to a wide array of participants coming from the primary target group of young people as well as from other stakeholders including employers, educational institutions, counselling centres, non-profit institutions and more. 111 students (learners) and 24 trainers were included in the testing itself, with 87.5 % of students and 100 % of trainers expressing satisfaction with the assessment of the educational programme as a whole (pedagogical materials, e-learning platform and mentoring).In the long run, key target groups and stakeholders, such as students, schools, educational institutions, labour offices etc can benefit from project results using open educational resources available through an e-learning platform that can be translated and used in a variety of environments and across different media. Educational institutions also have access to guidelines on the implementation of an educational programme that can help organizations to modernize their offer of entrepreneurial education.