PACE Promoting Employability through Entrepreneurial Actions in Cross-Border Student Enterprises

Aim of the project is to enhance education ability and the employability of youngsters in DE, IT & ES regarding “entrepreneurial

learning” at school in the area of tourism and leisure time and to encourage at the same time the linguistic competencies and media

competencies of the students by a cross-border cooperation. Especially the development of entrepreneurship competencies shall be

encouraged, which enables an active and responsible shaping of economically processes in a European community.

Demand: In the involved partner countries of the project (IT and ES) there are limited possibilities to start an education or to gain

occupational experience. Youth unemployment is low in DE, however, the existing problems regarding the transition school to

world of employment are partially deflected (among other things transition system) or are arising belatedly (among others.

education demolitions). There are approaches necessary, which have been established at school and which help to manage the

transition. Therefore the European Commission recommends to pay special attention to entrepreneurial competencies, because

foundation of new enterprises as well as employability of young people is encouraged by those competencies (see also EUKommission,

Neue Denkansätze für die Bildung, 20.11.2012). Especially student enterprises (Student Enterprises, SE’s) are counting

among the “worthwhile investments”, as on one side approximately 15% to 20% of students, participating at a SE’s project, are

founding later their own enterprise, whereby the percentage is three to five times higher than as in the whole population. On the

other side, youngsters - even if they are not founding an enterprise later- are benefitting from those experiences. Not only economic

understanding, but especially abilities like creativity, personal engagement, insistence, team spirit, risk awareness, sense of

responsibility will be developed, whereby the education and employability is considerably enhanced (see EU-Kommission,

Aktionsplan Unternehmertum 2020, Brüssel, 09.01.2013).

Target: The project pool is aiming at implementing cross-national acting SE’s in a network of vocational schools in the field tourism

and leisure time, in order to encourage in a cross-national network the employability of students by marketable entrepreneurial

action: The encouragement of entrepreneurial thinking and acting by development and the distribution of real products as well as

encouragement of IT and linguistic competencies by network-based working in a cross-national business and working process.

Students have the possibility to represent their competencies to potential employers by obtaining the certificate “Entrepreneurial

Project Management”.

Target group: These are teachers and students from vocational schools in three European countries. In order to safeguard the

success of the project, worldwide target groups will be addressed (among other things Landesinstitut für Schule, government

authorities, enterprises, potential schools for further SE’s, existing national initiatives for SE’s, already existing SE’s, which intend to

expand their business area by networking).

Centre of the project is the development and implementation of cross-border acting SE’s, which enable economic and social action

embedded into a pedagogical objective target. The students are not only involved into real economical processes, but are

participating actively at the design of their SE’s. They are sharing as well their “Best Practices” by jointly developing a peer 2 peer

guideline and they are learning cross-border from each other. They are jointly inventing new products and services, are calculating

costs, are testing these at the market and are constantly analysing and reflecting their action. Learning is action-oriented integrated

in the working process (John Dewey). Theory and practical experience are combined with each other and enable the development

of reflected entrepreneur-competencies. The European Commission emphasises the instrumental-qualifier aspect of entrepreneurial

learning. During a pedagogical setting there is a chance, to enlarge the concept by critical-analytical, reflective and ethical

dimensions, in order to offer youngsters the possibility not only to handle receptive and defensive, but to participate initiative and

active responsibly in the creation of economic processes within a European community. SE’s are not reinventions. The project’s

unique factor is that each concept existing in the countries will be combined with one another, whereby the approach is getting an

up to date further development, which puts the cross-border business operations and networking activities into the focus of a

European community.