"In response to the effects of the economic crisis, curtailed public budgets and the magnitude of future challenges, social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerge as a key policy priority in the EU. They are sources of social innovation and a contributing factor to building up the innovation capacity and competitiveness of EU economies. This turns them into increasingly critical elements of the EU development strategy. Yet business and economics education and training does not adequately reflect this trend.The interdisciplinary academic field of social entrepreneurship has not been well developed in the EU. The term itself is often understood poorly or narrowly. The study of CSR is limited in terms of academic hours and content. The project was built on the rationale that for business to be motivated and able to achieve a social impact, the very content of CSR and Social Entrepreneurship as subjects in education would need to develop and business education needs to grow more responsive to what have until now largely been public agendas for dealing with the pressing challenges facing society. BEST project has had the overall objective to promote cooperation and exchange of good practices among relevant organizations from 7 Program countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, UK), in view of enhancing the quality and relevance of education in the field of social entrepreneurship and CSR, fostering social innovation and supporting the social impact and responsibility of business.The specific objectives of the project were:- to support research and best practices exchange in the field of social entrepreneurship, social innovation and corporate responsibility, in view of making business/economics education more relevant to sustainable regional and local development;- to initiate cross fertilization between business/economics studies and sustainable development studies in order to develop an innovative curriculum that fully integrates the subjects of social entrepreneurship and CSR into business/economics and entrepreneurship education;- to develop a model certification procedure allowing business to evaluate and certify the skills of volunteers that contribute to CSR initiatives;- to maximize the impact of the integrated innovative curriculum by demonstration initiatives, training of trainers and the development of a pilot e-learning platform for training in CSR and Social Entrepreneurship;- to contribute to the promotion of social entrepreneurship and corporate responsibility among business, society, media and education providers.This project was a partner initiative involving 7 Higher Education Institutions, a NGO and 2 institutions providing non-formal education and professional training. The activities of the project included development of intellectual outputs, transnational project meetings, sustainability activities, dissemination activities, a joint training of staff, and evaluation activities. The main project outputs and results were: - Research report ""Involvement of business in promoting sustainable development at the regional and local levels in Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and the UK"";- Compendium of good practices for corporate responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and social innovation;- “Millennial Business Europe: Entrepreneurship for Sustainability” good practices electronic database - Course syllabuses for Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development;- Training/teaching materials for courses on Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development;- E-learning platform with online courses for training in Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship;- Model procedures for recognition of skills and competences acquired through internships and volunteering in CSR and SE initiatives;- A Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship;- 7 national-level conferences “Business Education for Sustainability” in the 7 project countries;- Blueprint label for business education “Business Education for Sustainability” (BEST);.The project’s longer-term impact has been:- to create public awareness of both the support needs and the potential of social business;- to create an “image” of social entrepreneurship and social business as a pragmatic and solutions-oriented approach that is nevertheless oriented towards social action and change;- to contribute to improving the visibility and credibility of social entrepreneurship and corporate responsibility, and to foster a more adequate understanding of this business field, including through research, sharing of good practices, and credibility enhancing labelling;- to underscore and enable the importance of incorporating “social” business studies into mainstream education, in view of both building skills and changing the mindset of the future business leaders."

<< Objectives >>Improving the capacity of partner organizations to collaborate, at local and international level, in order to involve volunteers and their communities in experiences that can enhance and promote the culture of giving and social inclusion, through the co-design and implementation of social crowdfunding initiatives.<< Implementation >>1. Organization and promotion by partner organizations of a training course on social crowdfunding, culture of giving and social inclusion.2. Training of volunteers of the organizations and comparison of different socio-cultural realities.3. Involvement of trained volunteers in the co-design of innovative social crowdfunding proposal towards local communities.4. Implementation of social crowdfunding campaigns.5. Dissemination of results.<< Results >>1. Improvement of the capacity of partner organizations to design and implement interventions for the promotion of the culture of giving and social inclusion through crowdfunding initiatives.2. Increased involvement of volunteers of partner organizations.3. Increased awareness of local and international communities about the culture of giving.

Literacy, numeracy and social skills are fundamental to master typical situations in everyday working life. Competence deficits in this areas can prove to be an obstacle to permanent and successful integration into the labour market especially for migrants, refugees and locals.The materials of the ERASMUS+ project “Workplace Basic Skills” were developed by eight different project partners and focuses on four learning scenarios in the areas of construction, cleaning, care and tourism. Using four protagonists, learners can experience how typical professional situations can be managed competently through the application of basic skills particularly required in these professions. Due to the action orientation of the concept, competences are trained and reflected in numerous situations. The specific objectives of the project were:•to develop Workplace Basic Skills materials for literacy, numeracy and social skills training in construction, cleaning, tourism and care.•to design Guidelines for Trainers with information on the target group and how to train social and communication skills particularly required in these professions. •to take into account aspects of diversity, especially of the cultural and social background of the learners, for their better integration into the European society.•to provide these e-learning materials and Guidelines at an e-platform and through a mobile app.•to provide the materials in English and all languages of the partnership plus Arabic and Pashtun. Our target groupThe target group of Workplace Basic Skills e-learning materials are people with poor literacy, numeracy and social skills. The people with these deficits are mainly migrants and refugees, but also local, mostly low skilled people.The guide is aimed at trainers who support the integration of adult immigrants and locals into the labour market. The materials are applicable in the following situations: job placement of adult refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants & locals who are not able to read, write and calculate well or have a lack of social competence; Language training for adult refugees, asylum seekers & immigrants; Integration programmes for adult immigrants and Vocational education and training.Workplace Basic Skills ApproachIt has long been known that learning theoretical concepts are insufficient to enable learners to apply their knowledge in practice. Instead of promote literacy, numeracy and social skills dryly, abstractly and separately from each other, our concept integrates all learning objectives in a story based approach.The learner can accompany the following characters on their first day of work:•Arman: a construction labourer•Anna: an office cleaner•Nedjad: a personal care worker in Health Services•Karina: a waitressThrough this approach, the Workplace Basic Skills approach aims to improve basic education and social skills as a basis for long-term integration into the labour market. Due to the size of the consortium of eight partners in total, an important milestone was set in strengthening the topic of basic education in Europe.

SE-HUB project is a joint initiative of 2 EU-based organizations from Bulgaria and Greece active in youth and social entrepreneurship(SE), 2 African youth agents - the National Youth Council of Namibia and a socially engaged enterprise from South Africa, - and 2 universities from Brazil and Mexico involved in youth empowerment, SE and community development. SE-HUB’s overall objective is to build the capacity of youth organizations in the EU and Partner Countries to create awareness and skills for youth-led social entrepreneurial ventures and for the application of socially innovative entrepreneurial approaches in non-profit work within the citizen sector, in view of encouraging positive and lasting social change, improving the effectiveness of youth work and fostering the viability of youth organisations.The specific objectives include-building the capacity of youth organizations to monitor and analyse their local socio-economic contexts and needs in view of devising efficient youth work approaches and focusing on the right priority areas for the promotion of social entrepreneurship and innovation-promoting the exchange of good practices in the field of SE and social innovation in the non-profit citizen sector-developing training modules in the above fields-building participating organizations’ capacities for integrating SE and social innovation training into youth work at the local level using innovative and effective training and learning methods-creating sustainable hubs for social entrepreneurship and social innovation promotion, training and support, and encouraging effective networking and international cooperation in this field.The main project outputs are-four capacity-building activities such as a youth workers’ seminar, training of trainers, peer coaching trainings and sessions -experimentation with peer coaching, experiential learning and blended-mobility combining on-site and on-line learning activities -a peer coaching guide that allows for organization of informal and non-formal learning activities on social entrepreneurship and social innovation for youth by any interested organization outside the partnership -training materials and a data-base of good practices, presented through OERs and a MobileApp-establishment of social innovation training hubs with the project partner organizations, connected in a SE-HUB Network-local dissemination and multiplier events in Bulgaria, Greece, Namibia, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico-two videos presenting SE-HUB achievements and feedback from the participantsIn general, 295 youth workers and active young people participated directly in the project events, among them 18 disadvantaged youth. 73 stakeholder organizations and entrepreneurs were involved in SE-HUBs' activities. 88 success stories of social ventures launched by young people and youth organizations from all over the world are presented in SE-HUB database and MobileApp. The indirect audience reached by the project amounts to 15534 persons. New social entrepreneurship trends blur traditional boundaries between the public, private and citizen sectors. This is confusing to many youth organizations which may lack the theoretical and practical base to engage in effective capacity building. The SE-HUB project was conceived as a joint effort to devise adequate youth work methods, identify good practices and develop accessible training materials for capacity building activities in this regard. In the longer run, SE-HUB should lead to increasing high quality specialized training opportunities for youths interested in social entrepreneurship and career in the citizen sector, better recognition of youth work and improved capacities for finding innovative solutions to pressing social problems.

The SMART project is a joint initiative of 6 organizations (2 youth NGOs, a university, an umbrella organization of NGOs, a National Youth Council and a private arts company) from Bulgaria, Hungary and 4 Partner Countries (PCs) – Botswana, Kenya, Namibia and the Republic of South Africa. All organizations have vast membership, outreach potential and strong credentials in the arts, arts management or education sectors.The SMART project’s overall objective is to promote collaborative development, dissemination and wide utilization of innovative Open Educational Resources (OERs) and training methods in arts and creative sector management and entrepreneurship, in view of building youth workers’ and youth organizations’ capacity to foster youth inclusion, youth employment, and youth-led community and social impact driven initiatives.The project’s key specific objectives are to:1. Utilize collaborative approaches, cross fertilization between academic training and youth work, exchange of good practices and the input of diverse cultural perspectives to develop innovative high quality OERs and non-formal education methods in the fields of arts management, arts marketing and creative entrepreneurship2. Build PCs’ youth sector capacities to actively promote youth creativity and entrepreneurship at the local and national levels, specifically by developing web-based resources3. Develop and implement innovative experiential learning methods in arts management by making the management of real-world international art events part of the training4. Introduce a mentoring approach in youth work in the arts and creative sectors.The objectives will be achieved by an integrated set of key activities:- a training and educational resource development activity focused on skills development in arts management, creative sector entrepreneurship and social impact driven arts-based initiatives- 3 training activities based on a learning-by-doing methods of training by involving trainees in the management of real-world art events implemented by the consortium members- development of high quality OERs and methodological guidelines for experiential (learning-by-doing) training approaches in the target fields, seeking to find a middle ground between sophisticated academic training and practical youth work- development of sustainable web-based inventories of youth arts and culture resources;- introduction of a sustainable mentoring scheme for upcoming artists and ambitious artsmanagers and administrators - a series of local training of trainers workshops.The project’s intended impact is to empower the youth sectors in the EU and the Africa regions to offer more and better quality training in arts management, arts marketing and creative entrepreneurship for youth outside formal education systems, thus bolstering the target regions’ creative economies and maximizing their capacity for sustainable job creation and reduction of youth poverty and social exclusion.