“As an entrepreneur, you never stop learning.”
Daymond John
Europe needs to stimulate creativity and entrepreneurial mindset in young people in order to be able to respond to current societal needs. It wishes to encourage innovative business start-ups and foster a culture that is friendlier to entrepreneurship as well as to the growth of small and medium-sized businesses.
A perceived lack of capabilities remains one of the most frequently cited barriers for people to start a business: this is a particular challenge for young people entering the job market, who have to rely more on education to gain relevant knowledge and skills. According to the latest statistics (OECD 2018 report) more than half of the young people aged 18-30 years reported a lack of entrepreneurship knowledge and skills while mentioning as well the insufficient opportunities to learn these.
Reinforcing entrepreneurial education in schools, vocational education institutions and universities has a positive impact on the entrepreneurial dynamism of the EU economy. The statistics confirm that students participating in any form of entrepreneurship education are three to six times more likely to start a business at some point later in life than those who did not receive such education.
The European Commission has therefore recently emphasised the need to embed entrepreneurial learning in all sectors of education including non-formal learning.
The project “Now, I know how” comes with a proposal to react to the above mentioned educational, economic and societal needs, setting as its aim to develop, describe, test, evaluate and disseminate an innovative training approach with a view of fostering entrepreneurial mindset and creativity as well as enhancing competitiveness and employability of youth.
The approach is innovative in several aspects concerning the training method as well as the curricula: ultimately, it enhances effectiveness and leads to learning outcomes that make young people significantly more competitive, employable, able to solve societal needs and ready to make full use of the advantages of the EU single market.
