Social economy and entrepreneurship has developed in the recent years as an answer to major social needs that have been exacerbated through the economic crisis. Social enterprises contribute to social innovation, the creation of new business models and the exploitation of unused resources. However, the supporting structures for social economy, such as advisory services, are still underdeveloped in the EU, slowing down the potential growth of this sector. For this reason the SESBA project (Social Enterprise Skills for Business Advisers) aims at developing a training methodology and a consulting toolkit that will enable business advisers to expand their competencies in order to provide tailored services to social entrepreneurs. Thus the profile of business advisors will become even more market relevant and tools will be provided for the development of solid support structures in social economy. The activities and related outcomes of the project include: - Extensive research that will depict the status of social entrepreneurship in the EU; relevant policies, structures and advisory services - Field research addressed at business advisers and social entrepreneurs in order to depict the qualifications needed for the effective provision of advisory services in social economy - The transfer of good practices from the social field to the business advisory for the development of new consulting techniques - The development of a comprehensive business advisors’ training program that corresponds both to the established needs and to academic standards - The development of a training portal that will host the learning content and material - Pilot training in the new consulting techniques - Assessment of the new consulting techniques in real conditions - Awareness raising among policy makers, stakeholders and all those involved in business advising, about the necessity of new consulting techniques for the provision of adequate services in the field of social economy. The method that will be used in the project can be summarized as: Combination of academic research, research at national level and field research among stakeholders for clear need identification. Identified needs will be addressed through the development of training material and consulting techniques, building on best practices. Defining desired learning outcomes and designing an assessment methodology ensures objective achievement. Pilot training and application allows for testing and improving the project products. The development of an electronic platform increases flexibility and accessibility. All those active in business advising and social economy will be invited to participate either in the research activities or in the events and training activities presenting the project products. The events will be of interest also to persons considering starting a social enterprise. All stakeholders of social economy will be invited to participate, such as policy makers, chambers, entrepreneurial networks, training entities, social economy organizations etc. An estimated total of 210 business advisors and advisories, social partners and social entrepreneurs will be addressed through research. An estimated total of 664 persons will participate in the multiplier events foreseen by the project. Business advisors will be offered the opportunity to enhance their professional outlook and make their services adaptive to special circumstances and needs in social economy. Awareness of the role of business advisors in the development of social economy will increase. The dismantling of barriers and the improvement of access to social economy through better support services is expected to encourage initiatives in social entrepreneurship, generating social value and positive economic impact may be successful. At a national level, the project products will complement existing services to social entrepreneurs. Overall, SESBA is expected to provide a milestone in the up-skilling of business advisors in terms of training tools and systematization of insight, knowledge and experience so far. Thus the project will be an important contribution to the investment in human resources in support of the social economy sector.

SCOBE provides a Toolkit for systematizing the collaboration amongst the world of business and the world of VET; and validating it by the creation of a blended learning programme tailored to the real skills demanded in the renewable energy field. The project directly addresses two European goals: 1. Facing the mismatching amongst educational programmes and skills demanded by the business sector. 2. Fostering the availability of a European workforce properly qualified to meet the job demands associated to renewable energies and the Strategy “Europe 2020”. SCOBE goes a step further and other initiatives, it will not only create a LEARNING PROGRAMME that addresses real needs of businesses and provides specific training on those issues; but also, will achieve the establishment of a CONTINUOUS RELATIONSHIP amongst VET and business worlds, going beyond the project and its partners. The SCOBE TOOLKIT includes: • The ENGAGEMENT BOX: a set of materials and procedures to engage experts of the business world with the creation (or updating) of a new training programme. • The BUSINESS OBSERVATORY, systematizing the identification of training needs according to latest trends in the labour market. • SCOBE GUIDELINES for collaboratively designing and creating training curricula, materials and tools. • THE COLLABORATIONS - STRENGTHENING PLAN, aimed at ensuring long term collaborations amongst VET centres and enterprises. The LEARNING PROGRAMME have been created by validating the SCOBE Toolkit and will include: an online virtual campus; and offline job shadowing activities taking place in Zaragoza, Spain. Project partners have decided to validate the Toolkit in a narrower sector instead of renewable energy in general, focusing in WIND ENERGY; As its expected job creation in EU is the most significant in the field of renewable energies (“Workers wanted: The EU wind energy sector skills gap” - European Wind Energy Technology Platform, 2013). Following the guidelines of the 2011 report “Skills and Occupational Needs in Renewable Energy”, SCOBE will address two TARGET GROUPS: A) New students of specialised courses designed to prepare them for work in renewable energy. B) Adults already working in the renewable energy sector with an interest in filling gaps in their skills or in up-skilling them. SCOBE has been designed with a collaborative approach that goes in line with ERASMUS + Strategic Partnership´s guidelines; at the same time that represents the spirit underpinning the project: bringing closer the business and the educational worlds. SCOBE ´s OPERATIVE GOALS: 1. The development of a novel set of tools for ensuring long term and effective collaborations of VET centres and business: the SCOBE Toolkit. 2. The validation of the SCOBE Toolkit by collaboratively (business – VET) creating and implementing a training programme aimed at Wind Energy. 3. The development and implementation of a blended learning programme, focused on identified training needs on the wind energy field: curricula, learning contents and tools, e-learning platform, job shadowing activities. 4. The involvement of 90 trainees in the programme. SCOBE´s impacts can be summarized as follows: - Facilitating the collaboration of the business world and educational institutions. - Establishing international collaborations amongst technical partners and trainees providers that will set an example that may inspire others (even at different training levels). - Fostering the achievement of European goals (Europe 20-20-20) by promoting the supply of a properly qualified work force for the Renewable Energy sector. - Supporting ICT – based teaching in VET by the creation of a blended learning programme. - Providing a properly qualified workflow in partners´ regions as well as at national level and in other countries speaking one of the project languages. - Providing an up-dated and multilingual VET programme focused on real learning needs in the field of Wind Energy that could be used by any VET institution interested. - Providing a Toolkit for smoothing collaborations amongst VET institutions and enterprises of the renewable energy sector.

Reaching the ambitions of the Europe 2020 and the Innovation Union requires much more than just technological innovations. In the academic community, Business Model Innovation (BMI) has for a long time been recognized as the key to improved competitiveness and innovativeness. However, BMI does not reach SMEs yet nor is there knowledge on how SMEs conduct BMI in practice. Empowering SMEs to conduct BMI requires new approaches. By leveraging existing networks and communities, we will gather examples, best practices and insights into Business Models (BM) from case studies from each and every European region or industry, complemented with insights from other leading countries worldwide. The BM vortex will thus generate an enormous and rich library of business models patterns and managerial structures, provided on a platform, to support SMEs in these communities. We will also develop innovative tooling and provide them on the platform to makes it easy for SMEs to develop, evaluate and plan new business models. The ENVISION consortium covers Northern, Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. In each region a top-ranked academic institution in the field of BMI is present as well as innovative businesses that deliver smart and tailored BMI tooling and reach out to SMEs. We build on over a decade of joint work on BMI and BM tooling. We will build and maintain regional and thematic communities. In the communities, support is delivered to help SMEs transform and improve their BMs. The consortium also includes partners and associated partners that will realize our pan-European reach to SMEs: on a pan-European level (e.g., UAEPME and female entrepreneurs’ network), on a national and regional level (e.g., chambers of commerce, family business organizations and statistical offices). The consortium also has linkages to EIT/ICT Labs and the European Service Innovation Centre (ESIC).

ENVISIONAlliances will serve primarily to develop a novel learning framework that ensures the bringing together of private enterprises with researchers and academics, through the organisation of several matchmaking and networking initiatives with a focus on encouraging mutual learning, collaboration and joint-venture creation that combines the theoretical expertise of the researchers with the practical knowledge and skills of the experienced entrepreneur. ENVISIONAlliances will work with universities to promote this learning framework workspace to make it as accessible as possible for academics and researchers, with a focus on long-term sustainability to guarantee accessibility to future academics. The proposed framework centres around the organisation several mentoring opportunities in the form of Entrepreneurship Residency Programmes for researchers, lecturers, other university staff and even Master/Doctoral candidates and Post-doctoral researchers, where these academics will get the chance to partner with an established commercial entity or promising startup, and both observe and participate in the day-to-day activities that are involved in being part of a private company. These residencies will be supported by preparatory courses that will enhance the effectiveness of the experience. By immersing them in a business environment, these residencies will impart on the academics the practical skills, attitudes and behaviours relevant to an entrepreneurial mind-set. ENVISIONAlliances will also lead to the creation of a new higher education curriculum and course on Entrepreneurial Competence, that will deliver the insights and entrepreneurial skills developed through the project in line with the EntreComp Framework, to the next generation of researchers and business leaders, particularly in the fields of STEM with a focus on green and digital sectors.

"The BEWARE project! is the result of a cross-sectoral partnership between SEP (applicant organization), IFOM, 4D INTERACTIVE, AcrossLimits and Yout Net. The purpose of this project was to raise awareness among young people and to teach them how to protect their personal data in the online environment and how to protect themselves from online harassment. In order to achieve this goal, the partners set out to develop the skills of the youth workers in order to be able to develop and use in the workshops with young people a non-formal learning tool: ”BEWARE!” We have established this transnational partnership because the identified problem is a common problem of young people, and the solution could come only through transnational cooperation. Addressing the common problem from different perspectives and experiences has led to an increased applicability of intellectual output. The project has achieved its purpose by fulfilling the 3 objectives: OB1: Developing the skills of 13 youth workers in the field of online safety through 2 transnational learning activities to create and use the ”BEWARE!” learning tool in youth work OB2: Improving the skills of 75 young people with reduced opportunities in the field of online data protection and cyberbullying through non-formal learning activities using BEWARE! OB3: Improving the level of knowledge of security issues in the online environment by 1000 young people through 25 non-formal learning sessions coordinated by 75 young people with reduced opportunities. In order to achieve these objectives, we followed an implementation plan that had 3 main components1. Training of youth workers through 2 transnational learning activities in the first 6 months of the implementation period. These activities contributed to the increase of the quality of the work of the youth workers in the activities that they subsequently carried out with the young people and were the basis of the creation of the intellectual output. 2. Creating the intellectual output ""BEWARE!"" was consistent with the results obtained from the questionnaires identifying the specificity of the online activities of young people. The transnational learning activities were followed by the elaboration in the IV-VIII months of the 2 chapters of the guide: ""Protection of data placed in the virtual environment"" (elaborated by AcrossLimits and SEP) and ""Cyberbullying between gambling and misdemeanour"" (elaborated by IFOM and YouNet). INTERACTIVE 4D realized during the 8th-15th months of the project a digital educational game (BEWARE!) https://www.bewareproject.eu/download/ . That completes the guide and increase the interest of the young people for the addressed subject. The output was tested by the target group to obtain feedback on its quality through the workshops that took place during the XV-XVII months of the project. 3. All previous activities have led to the valorisation of the results through awareness events, information and guidance of young people in order to adopt a conscious and safe behavior in the use of mobile devices. The target of these events that took place during the sixteenth-eighteenth months of the project were about 1000 young users of mobile devices. The implementation plan was monitored throughout the time by collecting information on the stage of the activities, from the local coordinators. They (reunited in the Steering Committee) participated in the 3rd, 9th, 15th months of the project at Skype information conferences, and in the 6th, 12th and immediately after the completion of the project, they sent to the General Coordinator official reports on the local activities carried out by each organization. The results of the project have been carefully monitored by the Quality Commission so that they meet the requirements of the standards imposed by Erasmus +. The results of the BEWARE project! have had a major impact on young people who used the created products to became more aware and alert to the dangers of the online environment, less vulnerable to cyber attacks. By involving in the G2 target group of young people with fewer opportunities, the project also responded to the priority of Social inclusion. The ""BEWARE!"" toolkit (the Guide and the game) has proven to be a modern and useful tool in working with young people.An important role in increasing the impact of the project was the dissemination campaigns carried out by the partner organizations by involving the members of the G2 group and the multiplication events of the eighteenth month.The intellectual output elaborated within the project will not end its life cycle once the financing period is completed, but will continue to be sustainable thereafter. During the multiplication events a network of partners was created to whom the project results were transferred and they will continue to use and popularize them."