Resources

Project result 1 of the project “Initiation – Fostering green social innovation and social entrepreneurship in school education”, consists of designing a high-quality methodological framework and curriculum for high school students’ education (HSS) and the most appropriate training possible in Social Entrepreneurship (SE) and Social Innovation (SI), as tools to provide sustainable solutions to address the environmental issues within the four country-specific educational and social contexts. It is divided into 4 Tasks as follows:

1: development of the INITIATION training objectives and framework, a desk and field research on the status of the environmental education and social entrepreneurship education in schools in the involved partner countries of EU – (found as pdf here)

2: the draft of a curriculum structure for addressing the above mentioned subjects in the context of secondary school education with learning objectives and activities – (found as pdf here)

3: training methodology for teachers and trainers with approaches for blended learning – (found as pdf here)

4: an overview, and guidance on how to read the documents – (found as pdf here)

This result deals with the development of learning resources, relevant to Social Entrepreneurship and tailored to the needs and characteristics of high school students. These learning resources are promoting the engagement of students in Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship as a way to provide sustainable solutions to environmental or social problems in their communities. They are developed in such a way to effectively address the characteristics and studying style of high school students, promoting at the same time self-directed learning and microlearning. Various formats like enriched text, presentations, short-videos and mini-games are employed in order to cover real case studies and specialized training material on the topic. The learning resources are designed to address the identified needs, both content-wise and structure-wise, for the familiarization of students with the social responsibility, the approach of independent thinking and democratic consciousness, as well as the knowledge of the collective forms of economic activity that serves the goal of sustainable solutions to environmental and climate-change problems. By using these learning resources, students build their transversal skills, critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and imagination, citizenship, student leadership, collaboration and awareness about the community, the climate challenge and the solutions available through social collaboration. Moreover, they develop increased motivation towards the use of service design methods to provide viable solutions for environmental problems that their local communities are facing. Last but not least, R2 includes the review and translation of the learning resources in 4 languages (EN, GR, IT, EΕ), so as to ensure they are also used in other countries, where similar training needs for students exist. The learning resources are available through the web-based Digital Platform developed under R3.

The INITIATION digital platform aims to build the social entrepreneurship and social innovation mind-sets of high school students, through experiential and active learning. High school students are invited to create -with the support of their teachers- their own virtual social enterprises and their business plans to fight environmental problems that local communities are facing. Virtual social enterprises can connect with each other as well as with real ones to create a community of practice and promote best practices for exploiting social innovation and social entrepreneurship as a driver for sustainable development and for solving environmental problems. Moreover, at this digital platform are available engaging online courses on social entrepreneurship and social innovation as well as mini games to build further your social entrepreneurship and social innovation knowledge and skills. The INITIATION digital platform is available in English, Greek, Italian and Estonian.

The Teachers’ Handbook of the INITIATION project is a useful and comprehensive guide developed to support teachers and educators in delivering a transformative learning experience to high school students. It provides essential information on each module and offers additional activities to enhance students’ engagement and understanding. Through the integration of practice-based pedagogies and pedagogies based on design thinking, students can gain insight into the social innovation e sustainability. Studying the modules will enable students to have, at the end of the experience, adequate knowledge and skills to develop and implement impactful social enterprises, addressing environmental or social challenges and to promote positive change in their communities. Specifically, the topics covered in the guide include an introduction to the concepts of the Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship, a comprehensive overview of scientific evidence for climate change, and an idea of how a Social Enterprise can be set up, to address social and environmental problems. Finally, it will provide the correct explanations to support students in learning the basics of developing a business plan for social enterprises and the different components of the analysis of the macro-environment.

Project result 5 of the project “Initiation – Fostering green social innovation and social entrepreneurship in school education”, consists of designing a comprehensive guide containing recommendations for the exploitation of the Initiation Approach and it’s results by relevant target groups. The recommendations are structured by country, to be specific enough, and at a more generic level, in order to support their transferability and systematization.  It is divided into 4 Tasks as follows:

1: We have made 8 structured interviews per country with stakeholders about the exploitation of Results 1 to 4. PDE-PEL, VANDRAGYM, CARDET and CSC developed national reports on the results of the interviews. CARDET, UPATRAS and CTI reached organizations abroad and identified the possibilities of the exploitation of project results in other countries. 

2: The information coming from Task 1,  was compiled into a comprehensive exploitation guide   – (found as pdf here). This guide provides general recommendations/conclusions on transferability, sustainability and systemic interventions. 

3: Summary of the exploitation Guide – (found as pdf here).