Topics: Disabilities; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Digital content, technologies and practices
Action Type: Cooperation partnerships in adult education
Countries Covered: 🇩🇪 Germany 🇮🇹 Italy đź‡đź‡· Croatia 🇷🇸 Serbia
Project duration: 01/12/2021 – 01/11/2023
Project card: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/projects/search/details/2021-1-DE02-KA220-ADU-000035207
Project partners:
- Outreach Hannover e.V., Germany
- LINK DMT SRL, Italy
- Learning Wizard d.o.o., Croatia
- Association for improvement of modern living skills “Realization”, Croatia
- Company for professional rehabilitation and employment of persons with disabilities ITECCION, Serbia
- Centre for Non-formal education and Lifelong learning (CNELL), Serbia
- Fondazione Don Giovanni Zanandrea Onlus, Italy
Summary:
There are lots of seniors and adults with disabilities who lack employment and regular salary/income. With the recent situation of Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that due to lockdown, isolation and other measures followed by citizens, lots of employers have fired their employees at the start of the pandemic measures or were not having enough revenues to keep the employees sufficiently paid. So, even with the economic help from the governments, we still found ourselves with higher unemployment rates and with lower economic levels after the pandemic (especially of our target groups) than before the pandemic measures started.
Quite often, both salaries of the employed citizens, as well as the pensions for the retired seniors, where exist – are not fully sufficient for the high costs of life in those “older” ages when their youngsters have left households to pursue their own career and life in separate households of their own. More and more seniors and adults (with disabilities), thus, are looking forward to another way of regular money incoming into their households. In addition, persons with disabilities often face societal barriers and disability evokes negative perceptions and discrimination in many societies.
For this target group, formal education takes too much time and is not a preferred option to take, nor is feasible for them for different reasons often. Adult education is a very appreciated option both for seniors and adults with disabilities and is perceived as a better option, as it is easier to enrol in an adult education programme, as well as the courses last shorter and are following the latest trends and needs of society and opportunities existing.
Motivation of partners in this project is to “equip” seniors and adults with disabilities with set of skills needed to work on personal development in fields of digital-social-entrepreneurial intelligence and creating (self-)employment opportunities proactively in today’s reality of employment uncertainty and the world of extinction of many known jobs and occupation now and even more in the future. With this project, we want our beneficiaries, seniors and adults with disabilities, to improve their digital social entrepreneurial skills, and we also aim to empower more adult educators for organising digital social entrepreneurial learning activities, in line with the newest updates.
Therefore, the objectives of the project were:
- Empower seniors and unemployed adults with disabilities for digital social entrepreneurship start-up through development of inspiring, innovative and up-to-date handbook, as well as the online course.
- Empower our adult educators and improve knowledge management of our organisations in theory and practice for building competences of educators in digital social entrepreneurship for seniors and adults with disabilities, through LTTA, innovative curriculum for educators’ training and useful toolkit with workshops for beneficiaries.
- Exchange good practices and further develop quality strategic partnership among partners from 4 European countries with different realities in regard to employment and digital/social entrepreneurship.
Project activities were:
- A1 – Project Management activities
- M1 – Kick-off meeting
- O1 – Handbook “Exploring Digital Social Entrepreneurship for seniors and adults with different abilities”
- M2 – Second meeting
- O2 – Curriculum “Empowering adult educators to encourage Digital Social Entrepreneurship start-ups among seniors and adults with different abilities”
- O3 – Toolkit “Mentoring and supporting seniors and adults with different abilities for Digital Social Entrepreneurship start-up”
- M3 – Third meeting
- O4 – E-learning course “Digital Social Entrepreneurship start-up course for seniors and adults with different abilities”
- C1 – LTTA Training of trainers
- E1, E2, E3, E4 – Open conferences in HR, RS, IT, DE
- M4 – Evaluation meeting
Project results:
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O1_DE_Handbook_DigSocEntSAd |
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O2_DE_Curriculum_DigSocEntSAd |
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O3_DE_Toolkit-DigSocEntSAd |
Links to the DigSocEntSAd O4 Online course in all 5 languages:
*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.