Sailing to Success!

15.01.2020

The training course “EntrepreneurShip (II) – Sailing to Success” took place in Slettestrand, in northern Denmark.

This training for youth workers involved 30 participants from organisations based in Italy, Slovakia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Austria, Croatia, England, France, Romania, Turkey, and Cyprus. The main aims were to develop new competences, strengthen the role of non-formal education in promoting entrepreneurship among young people, and encourage European mobility within local communities through programmes such as the European Solidarity Corps and Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs.

The coordinating organisation, Intercollege, hosted us in a family-run residence that represents an excellent example of Danish sustainable entrepreneurship, characterised by the use of local and/or organic food, low energy impact of the facilities, and the implementation of several social projects.

The training provided us with the opportunity to explore case studies of successful entrepreneurs from the participating countries, work on activities related to creative thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making, and visit the entrepreneurship hub of Aalborg University, which supports students’ entrepreneurial spirit by offering services such as co-working spaces and professional mentorship.

Throughout the week, we mainly used non-formal education methodologies, which also helped us improve our own ability to design and plan activities to be implemented with young people. According to the EACEA definition, non-formal learning is achieved through planned activities (with defined objectives and timeframes) and with the support of actors that do not belong to the formal education system, such as schools.

In our case, we were supported by fantastic trainers!

Strategic planning tools explored during the project

Eisenhower Matrix: useful for clarifying the priority of tasks based on their level of importance and urgency;
SWOT Analysis: a tool to assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a project, a business, or any situation in which an organisation or an individual needs to make decisions to achieve a specific goal;
Business Model Canvas: a visual framework consisting of 9 key elements that describe any entrepreneurial activity. Recently, two additional sections focusing on the environmental and social impact of a project have been added to the classic version.

If you are a youth worker and are interested in entrepreneurship, you can download two manuals developed by Intercollege on this topic: