The Primary Objective of SPEC is to initiate a replicable model of learning that enables enterprise centre managers, tenant businesses and learners to adopt sustainable and responsible business practices. Focusing on the dimensions of sustainable practice such as: sustainable buildings (NZEB), energy and resource efficiency, sustainable eco-systems and collective action, the SFEC programme will assist the participant cohort in developing practices that will make a transformative contribution to addressing climate challenges. Many enterprise centre managers want to take measures to improve the sustainability of their centres and gain expertise/learning that they can pass onto their tenants but there is currently no VET training or offering of best practices available to help drive change or improve their own environmental practice as part of an innovative pedagogical process . SFEC’s effort to align national priorities, needs of local communities and high-impact sustainable initiatives through the establishment of robust business models will result in more sustainable, scalable and replicable solutions. OEC, NASEC and ANCES have vast dissemination networks that the project will utilize. The transition to a low-carbon economy means a new economic model is necessary, focused on low-carbon growth, resource efficiency and sustainable development. That presents significant transformational challenges for enterprise where sustainable transitions are highly dependent upon technological solutions: industrialisation has catalysed a linear economy in which take-use-dispose culture is accentuated. A transition to a circular, sustainable economy is essential. The SFEC project will work to:1) Identify best practices that enterprise centres can replicate to reduce their carbon footprint, improve their services/supports and future proof their infrastructures (IO1)2) Guide enterprise centre leaders through strategic sustainability planning which will bring sustainable practices and ideas to fruition via concrete actions (IO2)3) Empower enterprise centre leaders to become Sustainability Educators and Agents of Change capable of teaching and training SME and start up clients about the principles of sustainability and green business (IO3)4) Develop a self-learning sustainability and climate-action online course for Enterprise Centres tenants and wider SME’s to enable them to operate in an environmentally and socially responsible manner and align their sustainability goals with those of the enterprise centres where they are based (IO3)Our target participants span four categories:• Organisations linked to target groups: Enterprise Centres networks in partner countries and across Europe, and businesses and representative bodies for innovation supports companies • Policy makers in terms of energy and sustainability and economic development • Partners’ links to associates, peers, stakeholders and policy makers at regional, national and EU sustainability development networks.• Media - specialist education, energy and sustainability sector press and sustainability influencers will be a useful means of recruiting the aforementioned target groups and we will target relevant sections of media to reach stakeholders across the other three key target groups.Impact is at every level of the project. SFEC will develop the competences of leaders in enterprise centre management in sustainable business practice to include: sustainable buildings (NZEB), energy and resource efficiency, sustainable eco-systems, collective action, state of the art digital technologies and working practices. Impact will take place at every organisational level: Board of Directors, Management Team, Operational Staff, Volunteers. Enterprise centres business advisors, mentors and VET educators will increase their awareness of the importance of sustainable practice capabilities as a specific competence, will grow professionally with the ability to teach new skills through pedagogic strategies & new exposure to digitally adept teaching tools.SME owner, managers & employees, who have not traditionally had access sustainability practices and climate mitigation actions training, will acquire the skills & confidence to undertaken new sustainability projects & are likely to actually do so in the first 6 months after completing the course. This will contribute directly to their professional development as they will strengthen their eco innovation mindset & skills. Last, but not least, will be the economic advantages conferred by the greening of their businesses. SFEC will help partners gain an in-depth specialist knowledge of the contemporary climate change mitigation actions for business and the future-proofing sustainability practices as an innovation driver. SPEC also has impact on Sustainability Advocates: Non-affiliated members, public or otherwise, who may be interested in learning about best practices in the sector.

I-EAS-IT enables SMEs facing an acute business crisis to precisely determine the crisis status, identify causes and initiate appropriate countermeasures. At the same time, (future) entrepreneurs are trained to implement early crisis detection mechanisms to prevent future company crises. The project achieves a sustainable impact by directly securing jobs on the one hand and by professionalizing VET organizations, management consultants, entrepreneurship and SME support infrastructures and by providing first of its kind resources to be implemented into their curricula and services.Experts are increasingly speaking of a renewed impending economic crisis. This crisis will hit the European economy - which has just largely recovered from the previous crisis - particularly hard. This is particularly true for SMEs, often referred to as the backbone of the European economy. Various studies assume that, depending on the country, between 7% and 25% of small and medium-sized enterprises are already in advanced stages of crisis as so-called zombie companies, without having often realised this. The more advanced the stage of the crisis, the more complex and unlikely a successful restructuring becomes. While entrepreneurship support justifiably occupies a special position in European policies, the creation of crisis resilience for SMEs and start-ups must be given greater attention in future.Based on our daily experience and many projects with VET, consultants and support infrastructures, we are realising a great demand for this topic area. At the same time, it becomes clear that the people involved are often overburdened and underestimate the consequences of a looming corporate crisis.Therefore, we build on the existing phase theory on corporate crises and initially research early stage crisis indicators for SMEs. Comparable, practice-relevant studies on this subject area do not yet exist. Building on this, we will develop an app-based, interactive crisis analysis model as well as specific learning resources which will enable SMEs to develop suitable countermeasures. In order to achieve the most sustainable impact possible, we also focus on future generations of entrepreneurs by developing resources that can be integrated into the entrepreneurship curriculum and help to implement crisis prevention mechanisms. To guarantee the widest possible use, we involve VET organisations, trainers, management consultants and support structures (incubators, chambers e.g.) in our work and enable them to professionalise themselves and their services.Specifically, we will:1-Identify the most relevant early phase crisis indicators for SMEs (IO1)2-Develop an innovative curriculum and learning framework for (future) Entrepreneurs (IO2) empowering them to implement early warning systems into their organisations to become more crisis resilient (Stand-alone Online-Course as well as curricula to be implemented by trainers, consultants, VET and Entrepreneurship/SME support structures)3-Develop an interactive crisis analysis tool (IO3) that enables SME owners/managers to identify the phase, the extent and the causes of the crisis. On this basis, individual countermeasures are proposed, and the specific knowledge is provided4-To ensure wide and free access, all produced resources will be shared together with a large variety of additional information on our interactive knowledge exchange platform as OERs (IO4)In doing so, the project addresses the following needs of our target groups and will create sustainable impact for them:a) SME Owners/managers and future entrepreneurs gain a profound understanding of the importance of early detection mechanisms and indicators and are enabled to take appropriate countermeasures. b) VET organisations, trainers, management consultants and support structures such as chambers or incubators are put in a position to sustainably professionalise their services and increase their impact. c) By enabling companies to identify crises at an early stage and take appropriate measures before a crisis causes irreversible effects, we make a sustainable contribution to securing jobs at regional level. Against the background of networked value chains, this strengthens the resilience of the economy at national and EU level.d) Project partners will acquire new strategies, tools and methods for improving the effectiveness of their services. They will improve their own competences in knowledge sharing and strategic relationship building and have a clear understanding of how to sustain and grow the project in the long term.The results of the project are basically universal and, in combination with our multidimensional impact and dissemination strategy, will have a sustainable effect beyond the partner regions. The project is important because we need to ensure that local, mostly SME-based economies are strengthened to be more crisis resilient in order to strengthen the European Economy as a whole.

CONTEXTThe Covid Pandemic has caused huge disruption to our economies and societies. Europe’s SME are among the hardest hit, with steep drops in revenues threatening the very existence of their businesses. Entrepreneurship educators have a critical role to play, providing managers and staff with access to the knowledge and skills training they need to reinvigorate their business models and survive the crisis. However, facing the imperative to embrace digital teaching and learning, entrepreneurship educators themselves need to improve their own digital competences in order to rise to the challenge. In response, the OBJECTIVE of INDEED is clear: increase the ability and motivation of Entrepreneurship Educators to embrace inclusive digital pedagogy and tools in their training and mentoring. In doing so, they will not only increase the overall effectiveness of the learning outcomes, they will also become agents of change to improve the digital competences of entrepreneurs & SMEs.ACTIVITIES In order to achieve this objective, we will produce 3 complementary outputs:IO1: The Inclusive Digital Pedagogy Toolbox. An interactive publication featuring the 20 best digital learning resources of particular relevance for Entrepreneurship, tested and tried by our team, with practical guidance on how to use them.IO2: Digital Pedagogy Online Learning Course. A course that Entrepreneurship Educators can use to strengthen their own digital skills. IO3: Inclusive Entrepreneurship Hackathon. A Guide that introduces EEs to the concept of a Hackathon on creative digital pedagogic approaches & tools and guides them on how to use these tools and techniques to implement more inclusive, more innovative, more impactful teaching.TARGET GROUPSThe project specifically targets Entrepreneurship Educators in colleges and continuing VET comprising enterprise trainers, lecturers, business coaches etc. In addition, small businesses, encompassing early stage entrepreneurs and established sole traders, micro and small enterprises are a secondary target group.Finally, although a VET project, given our partnership profile, INDEED is also likely to cause positive impact for educators and managers in Adult and Higher Education too.RESULTSDuring the life span of the project 500 entrepreneurship educators will receive or download our outputs; 80 Entrepreneurship VET organizations will share the resource with their staff and deliver the INDEED online course, resulting in even greater numbers of upskilled educators; 30 stakeholder organizations will become more aware of the urgency of improving the digital competences within entrepreneurship VET and explore new ways to support and incentivise organizations who offer this training.IMPACTINDEED has been carefully designed to ensure that the outputs that are produced and the activities carried out in the project are capable of generating the desired impact for each target group. By improving the skills and attitudes of business educators to increase the use of digital tools and digital teaching we will impact not only the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training to individual trainees and groups, but be able to create waves of change regarding the use of digital technology in entrepreneurship VET as a whole.At a national level the project will impact on the entrepreneurship VET sector by showing how it can and must adjust to harness the power of digital technology, or risk failing itself and its trainees and clients. We will demonstrate that resistance to change can be overcome and that increasing digital competences and closing the skills gap will not occur automatically; it requires systematic investment and support in the development of the digital competences of our teachers and trainers. At international level, the project will impact positively on the ongoing work of EU bodies to develop robust yet practical frameworks for competence development and to close the digital skills gap. The EntreComp, DigComp, DigCompOrg and DigCompEdu frameworks will be reference points throughout the project.