<< Background >>SMEs have undisputed significance in driving Europe’s economic growth, accounting for 85% of new jobs and 66% of private-sector employment. As such, the quality and relevance of entrepreneurship education provided for new and existing entrepreneurs play a key role in achieving the 2020 goals of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Statistics show that more than half of European businesses will not survive past the 5-year mark. As such, business failure is recognised as an important topic. But to date, the emphasis has been placed on accepting failure and helping entrepreneurs learn from the experience, and start over again. But this overlooks the huge economic, societal and personal consequences of business failure.STAY AFLOAT project is designed to help entrepreneurs and SMEs identify and interpret early warning signs of a business crisis. It aims to increase the number of business advisors (coaches) who are incorporating early-stage warning signals of business crisis and intervention strategies into their training programmes. By improving the skills and attitude of business advisors, the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training will be increased, and waves of change will be made through entrepreneurship teaching.Business Advisors and organisations will be used for both developing the tools created for the programme and trained to deliver the model. The three key outcomes / results of the programme are:1. Stay Afloat Framework – a digital document containing up to date knowledge on early warning signals of business crisis, including detection and intervention opportunities.2. Stay Afloat Curriculum and Open Educational Resources (OERs) – a complete toolkit for business advisors for teaching early-stage intervention skills to entrepreneurs as part of their business development programmes.3. Stay Afloat Online Course – based on the OERs and optimised for digital delivery, enabling SMEs and entrepreneurs to develop and test their skills.<< Objectives >>STAY AFLOAT aims at supporting individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences, especially after the recent 2018 Proposal for a Council Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, that replaces the 2006 recommendation with 8 competences which include “entrepreneurship competence”, a concept “aligned with the JRC Entrepreneurship Competence Framework. In addition, creativity and the ability to plan and manage processes are highlighted as essential dimensions of an entrepreneurial mindset”. Under this priority the project will act in order to foster employability and socio-educational and personal development, as well as participation in civic and social life; in a fast-changing world, this includes an entrepreneurial mind-set, critical thinking and creativity, as well as forward-looking skills in fields that are strategic for smart economic and social development. This priority will include actions to develop businesses and intermediary bodies; support work-based learning, improve the quality and effectiveness of learning mobility experiences and the development of national and cross-country sectoral skills strategies. This can contribute to higher quality of education and training and support permeability between the different education and training pathways, because the project will work on several attitudes, knowledges and skills which are never taught to entrepreneurs or managers. Thus, the project works in the improvement of entrepreneurship, employability and productivity by giving entrepreneurs and their teams a set of extra skills and weapons for their performance thanks to the contact with Emotional Intelligence. As a direct consequence, the whole team of a company will benefit of those skills, generating better professional skills and thus, reinforcing the results and sustainability of companies for a productive and sound European society.In line with Erasmus + Programme, the project will support the setting up of upskilling pathways by making available skills identification and screening, recognition of flexible modes of learning and through the validation of skills acquired through informal and non-formal learning.Furthermore, STAY AFLOAT will increase demand and take-up through effective outreach, guidance and motivation strategies which encourage low-qualified adults (in this case, those entrepreneurs without an adequate training or formation in this field) to develop and upgrade their entrepreneurship competences towards higher qualifications.The project’s training methodology is based on the Open Educational Resources (OER) approach and online learning, thus developing digital and physical training materials that will be available under a creative common license allowing their use and distribution free of charge. The OER material will be made available in English and all project languages.<< Implementation >>The project is double focused. On one hand, it wants to assist entrepreneurs (especially those low skilled) to discover and develop the talents that are vital to starting, growing, and sustaining a thriving enterprise. On the other hand, it wants to work with coaches and facilitators in order to give them the resources and knowledge they need to fully support current and future entrepreneurs in understanding the skills based on coaching and EI, and their unique talents. With that guidance, entrepreneurs will develop their talents into strengths to achieve greater business effectiveness and success.The project aims at helping entrepreneurs during the first five years of a new company to overcome the most important challenges by using coaching and Emotional Intelligence skills and tools. The project wants to promote sustainability of young companies and therefore employability, developing a training system for coaches and entrepreneurs in order to generate the skills and abilities needed in this key moment for entrepreneurship.The KOM will set the scene, going through goals and dividing tasks and responsibilities. It will be a key point in the establishment of the Executive committee, Promotion and Communication Committee and Quality Committee. According to the sections described in this form, the first set of activities will be directed toward the establishment of working groups, who will be responsible for activities concerning the detailed working plan for the 3 Results of the project. The creation of the website and virtual collaborative environment for sharing all consortium documents will be also a basic step.Transversal activities will cover project management, monitoring and evaluation, communication and exploitation of the results and contents of the project. They will last the whole duration of the project. Management and implementation activities led by the coordinator will also include the Quality Control activities, risk assessment activities, financial management and coordination of all partners in financial reporting and content reporting, organising project meetings and online meetings, monitoring and addressing all issues as they arise.An internal area for project management will be generated to facilitate communication, exchange of ideas, comments, files and materials between partners, as well as collaboration in the general management of STAY AFLOAT. This area will be essential in the success of the project, because it will be the permanent meeting point for partners. The 5 TPMs will facilitate cooperate and partnership working among project partners and support the management and delivery of key activities and outcomes.The training systems (R1 and R2) will be implemented at a regional scale for regular personal contacts, keeping travel efforts low, and strengthening regional networks. They are the core of the project and all transversal, management and preparation activities are focused on the right execution of innovative and attractive training systems for the targets depicted in the description of the project. The training systems will be tested and adapted in all project countries. Training guides for learners and facilitators will be developed to support the use of the OER training system also within formal training.MEs will promote the Results created by the project and facilitate ongoing engagement with target groups in order to maximise the impact of project activities. Focus group discussions with representatives of the target groups will be held in all 8 countries to identify core issues and needs of target groups will be quantified through questionnaires.All the results, conclusions and information of the project will be available on the website and platform, but the consortium also wants to stress the importance of the face-to-face contact between the facilitator and the final users (managers, leaders and workers in general) in order to implement this approach.<< Results >>STAY AFLOAT project is designed to help entrepreneurs and SMEs identify and interpret early warning signs of a business crisis. It aims to increase the number of business advisors who are incorporating early-stage warning signals of business crisis and intervention strategies into their training programmes. By improving the skills and attitude of business advisors, the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training will be increased, and waves of change will be made through entrepreneurship teaching.Business Advisors and organisations will be used for both developing the tools created for the programme and trained to deliver the model. The three key outcomes of the programme are:R1. Stay Afloat Framework – a digital document containing up to date knowledge on early warning signals of business crisis, including detection and intervention opportunities.R2. Stay Afloat Curriculum and Open Educational Resources (OERs) – a complete toolkit for business advisors for teaching early-stage intervention skills to entrepreneurs as part of their business development programmes.R3. Stay Afloat Online Course – based on the OERs and optimised for digital delivery, enabling SMEs and entrepreneurs to develop and test their skills.