From 19 to 21 March, the first workshop of the project “peer-learning activities in entrepreneurship education and in women entrepreneurship” (EE/WE) took place in Budapest. The project is funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) under the COSME programme. The workshop showed that all countries are advancing in entrepreneurship education but their situation is largely different and various kinds of hindrances remain.
The event convened 56 important players in entrepreneurship education from eleven European countries. They discussed good practices how to further develop entrepreneurship education as well as related drivers, hindrances and policy recommendations.
The experts attending the workshop came from a variety of targeted organisations: from ministries of education, ministries for economic affairs and governmental agencies as well as from businesses, chambers of commerce, non-governmental organisations and universities. The eleven countries covered were Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Serbia, Slovakia and Turkey. The workshop took place in a newly opened inspiring space in downtown Budapest called HubHub.
Sharing success stories from across Europe, the participants were motivated to develop strategies and action points for both national and European levels to move entrepreneurship education forward. Deep-dive sessions focussed on three issues: First, understanding the European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (EntreComp) and how to make use of it in the local context. Second, analysing national strategies to foster entrepreneurship education and what can be learned from the experience of others. Third, some of the latest research on what drives impact and growth in entrepreneurship education.
The ultimate goal of the event was collective policy development among the participants with a participatory leadership approach. Hence the workshop was highly interactive. “It was very insightful to listen to national and international discussions about how to promote entrepreneurship education”, says project co-ordinator Stefan Lilischkis from empirica. “In some countries, actors know each other well and co-operate intensely, while other countries used the opportunity to figure out how to work more closely together in the future.”
Key takeaways from the workshop included the following:
— A set of future action points for each country, discussed in the national delegations, with a commitment to deliver.
— A deeper understanding of the roles and possible action of different types of stakeholders involved in entrepreneurship education.
— Recommendations as to where the European-level action can be most effective in supporting the national needs and action.
— How European policy instruments and the examples from other countries can be used at local level.
Another set of eleven countries will be invited to the second peer-learning workshop in Tallinn in November 2019.
See a video about the workshop at https://youtu.be/pVSOKg1yNcE<
A newsletter provides further information about this workshop: EE/WE Project Newsletter No.1, April 2019.
The EE/WE project is a joint activity by empirica (coordinator), JA Europe, EY, the University of Wuppertal, European Schoolnet, and the European Centre for Women and Technology. The project will run until June 2021. It will organise altogether six peer-learning workshops in major European cities: three for entrepreneurship education and three for women entrepreneurship. The outcome will be new European policy agendas for the two subjects focused.