Learners
European Highway to Entrepreneurship is a Learning Partnership focussed on information/best practice exchange between organisations that offer formal and non-formal education, training and support to those who want to start their own business.
Each partner identified 10 - 15 learners who were planning to start a business to identify barriers/obstacles and the information and knowledge they needed. The data collated was used to help the group create information about entrepreneurship in each country which have been collated into a manual.
The manual has been reviewed by a focus group of learners, who can feed back on the effectiveness of teaching materials and delivery by teachers and mentors.
Each partner will select a successful new entrepreneur who can be ‘showcased’ as an example to learners at the start of their journey. They will take part in the dissemination conference, where they can share their experiences and will be presented with a “European Success Award.”
The beneficiaries are those who experience lack of opportunity through gender, regional economic downturn (especially rural areas) and unemployment, or disability. For these groups, self-employment and entrepreneurship can be a way to become independent from social welfare and take full part in society and their local community.
All partner institutions have experience of offering training and support to a variety of socially excluded groups, using different approaches and methods to delivery training and personal mentoring/support.
All the participating institutions want to develop the entrepreneurial competencies of their learners in order to improve the employability skills of disadvantaged target groups who lack confidence in their own abilities to succeed. These groups may vary from institution to institution, but will include women returnees to the labour market, migrants, young people taking their first steps into employment, disabled people and those living in rural areas. We want to increase the self-motivation and self-confidence of learners through innovative pedagogical methodologies and raise learners’ awareness of the European labour market.
Below are links to case studies of successful entrepreneurs from each of the participating member countries.