Global Entrepreneurship Week Foundation, Poland (Fundacja Światowego Tygodnia Przedsiębiorczości) together with its partners: Youth Business Poland, the University of Malta’s Edward de Bono Institute, and British NGO Peace Child International, has just launched the “Best Practices in Teaching Entrepreneurship and Creating Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Europe” publication.
The project was initiated by GEW Poland Foundation and myself in response to the low levels of entrepreneurship among young Europeans, which contributes to unemployment, underemployment, and difficult school-to-work transitions. Its main outcome is the international publication collecting best practices in formal and non-formal education in terms of creating entrepreneurial skills and attitudes. It also focuses on how we can build a fruitful and partner relations between the public, private and non-governmental sector with an aim to foster entrepreneurship.
Financed by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ project, the publication is the result of a collaborative effort by the four partners conducting several months of research and participating in three international meetings in Poland, Malta, and the UK. Each partner organization involved in the project promotes entrepreneurship in a different capacity.
The three editorial and exploratory meetings in Poland, Malta, and the UK gave partners a better understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems across borders and helped them identify successful initiatives. We had unique opportunities to meet NGO, private sector and university representatives who not only do a great work but also eagerly cooperate with one another. We returned to our countries with lots of new ideas to foster entrepreneurship in a more innovative way.
The publication makes eight key recommendations that state institutions, NGOs, and the private sector can implement to promote entrepreneurship.
- Include quality entrepreneurship education throughout all levels of education,
- Involve NGOs, entrepreneurs, and businesspeople in entrepreneurship education,
- Engage students in active learning through workshops and classroom study,
- Giving teachers the training, resources, and top-down support they need to become effective entrepreneurship educators,
- Use tools and methods of teaching entrepreneurship which are already available (the publication contains a number of replicable resources and projects),
- Create methods for a smooth transition between graduation and becoming an entrepreneur (i.e. incorporating incubators into universities),
- Foster entrepreneurial ecosystems that are simple and legible for entrepreneurs (i.e. through digitalisation),
- Garner support from public, private, and non-governmental organizations for aspiring entrepreneurs, from subsidies to mentoring, trainings, e-learning, or incubators.
It is available in six languages: English, Polish, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
Download from: http://www.tydzienprzedsiebiorczosci.pl/files/best_practices_EN.pdf
Huge thanks to all the co-authors: Leonie Baldacchino, Janne Geurts, Marta Paulina Migoń, Shirley Pulis Xerxen, Elizabeth Weiner
For more info and other language versions, please contact me directly: justyna@tydzienprzedsiebiorczosci.pl
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Ms. Politańska graduated from the University of Warsaw with a degree in political science (2011). She was a scholar of the Universiad Complutense de Madrid and Universitaet Konstanz (Germany), where she conducted research on the political participation of women. She has also several years of experience in the advertising industry (Ogilvy Action, Ogilvy&Mather Advertising, E-graphics). Her areas of expertise include the labor market, entrepreneurship, education, women rights, management, marketing and advertising.
Justyna was a chairperson of the Youth Forum Lewiatan (operating within the most influential confederation of employees in Poland) from 2012 to 2014. She is a senior fellow of a prestigious Humanity in Action Fellowship (2013). In March 2014 Justyna co-founded the Global Entrepreneurship Week Foundation in Poland and has led the organization ever since.