Duration: 24 months (October 2016 – October 2018)
TUS Project Budget: € 37,145
Total Project Budget: € 273,764
Summary:
This strategic partnership aims to support the development of innovative practices in the education and training of individuals engaged in social enterprises. The outputs of the project will impact on the capacity of the social enterprise sector at organizational, local, regional, national and European levels.
Many successful social enterprises in the more developed western and southern European countries have grown by developing their organizational capacity. This has allowed such organisations to achieve the needed investment funding to deliver their aspirations and mission statements. The former focus of social enterprises looking for grant aid to support an exciting new idea needs to change.
Social entrepreneurs, managers and their potential investors must recognize that excellence in innovation is insufficient on its own to generate lasting business results. The co-production of local solutions to social problems needs SE. organizations to be innovative and have the capacity to attract investors by being able to demonstrate their impact and develop the organisational profile, leadership and management approach to deliver the services and goods required in the locality.
In the Northern, Central and Eastern parts of Europe, social enterprises are not fully recognised as a system for tackling issues such as unemployment (specifically youth), and social and economic exclusion in disadvantaged locations. Hence, the need to build and promote this sector across Europe is key.
Objectives and Aims of the Project:
- To develop a digitally enhanced blended learning set of social enterprises development, education and training tools (SEDETT) that can be used by, social entrepreneurs to learn how to assess their capacity development needs.
- The introduction of open access materials, including an e-tool that can be used by social entrepreneurs to identify creative education methodologies for use in their organisational development (based on case study data).
- The implementation of open access blended e-learning tools, developed from data of 24 social enterprises organisations in Europe, from both urban and rural locations, targeted at groups such as: students, unemployed youth, teachers, educational institutions, existing social enterprises, policy makers etc.
- The strengthening of lifelong learning and mobility of existing employees in social enterprise organisations through the development of the digital SEDETT toolkit.
Contact Details
Dr Shane O’ Sullivan
Project Officer
Email: shane.osullivan@tus.ie
Cathy Jones
Project Co-Ordinator
Email: cathy.jones@tus.ie
TUS Activities
- Data collection and analysis for best practice case studies in social enterprise.
- Contribute to reflective processes on the evaluation of the project outputs and compilation of the projects final reports.
- Contribute with others to the evaluation processes of activities, events and outputs.
- Generate and disseminate project newsletters to all parties concerned.
- Contribution to workshops and other practical activities.
- To hold a local Conference of SEDETT targeted at: various educational organisations and their post graduate students, vocational training companies, careers advisors, teachers, higher education representatives, local/regional authorities representatives, and NGOs involved in providing careers advice/counselling to unemployed youth on social entrepreneurship and social enterprise development.