CONTEXTCOVID 19 has exposed the vulnerabilities of lower skilled adults and young people by exacerbating the digital divide. Strategically, the pandemic has impacted career opportunities and mental health, accelerating the imperative need to provide adults and young people with “skills to improve and adapt” in a rapidly changing environment. To meet these challenges will require huge creativity and collaboration from education providers. But traditionally, adult education services are resource intensive, slow, top-down and lack use of digital pedagogies. However, social innovation offers a new pathway and has been advanced intensively by the creative and cultural industries. Recognizing the cultural sector as a place where “social, community and digital innovations take place” highlights the need to involve small scale creative actors to share and adopt the diverse innovation being developed in their environment.For this reason, CSI EU project brings together specialists in adult learning with leaders of outstanding arts and culture institutions to work together to develop social innovation projects with young adults in cultural and creative spaces to tackle current and local issues presented by the pandemic. The OBJECTIVE of CSI:EU is clear: to empower adults and young people most affected by COVID to become confident cultural social innovators and design innovative (digital) solutions to challenges posed by the crisis. In so doing they will develop valuable transversal, digital and employment related skills and improve their own mental health. ACTIVITIES/METHODOLOGY We will achieve our object through producing 3 innovative and complementary OutputsIO1: CULTURAL SOCIAL INNOVATION GUIDE will map the various best practice examples of cultural social innovation, as well as the approaches, methods and tools used to carry out these projects.IO2: THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TOOLBOX will contain a range of measures, tools, techniques and practical guidance for Adult and Youth Educators wishing to incorporate social innovation activities into their teaching strategies, with a particular focus on increasing their confidence in using digital tools. IO3: CULTURAL SOCIAL INNOVTAION HACKATHON AND GUIDE Intensive 1- or 2-day cultural social innovation trainings for both adult/youth educators and young adults on how to carry out/develop CSI projects.PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS: We will work with three specific target groups:ADULTS AND YOUNG PEOPLE, with lower skills especially those at risk, need to strengthen key competences and engage more fully with society around them.ADULT AND YOUTH EDUCATORS need to understand the role of CSI and increase their own proficiency in teaching it through innovative pedagogic approaches. CULTURE-CREATIVE ORGANISATIONS need new and innovative ways to engage with other sectors and local communities in a strategy to become more resilient/relevant in the current time of economic uncertainty, ensuring the sustainable development of cultural & arts sector across Europe.RESULTS: During the life of the projects our outputs will be used directly by over 200 adult educators and youth workers in the development and user testing phases and downloaded by a further 500. In addition, 100 adults and young people will be directly involved in the project Hackathons and at least 175 adult educators, youth workers and stakeholders will participate in multiplier events.After project completion, more than 120 adult education organisations and dozens of stakeholders will continue to offer/ support the development of CSI education, strengthening the ability of our adult education sector to offer high quality education that is more relevant and responsive to the learning needs of adults and young people in the rapidly changing digital and post COVID world. IMPACTThe project has been carefully structured to achieve our goal of enabling adults and young people to develop a broad range of transversal skills. Thousands of adults and young people will become confident social innovators and use this mindset and skillset to become engaged, connected and empowered as changemakers in society, as well as pursue enhanced professional opportunities.We will generate this impact by increasing the motivation and ability of adult educators and youth workers to adopt the CSI: EU model incorporating approaches from the cultural and creative sector, as well as digital skills’ training and providing the tools and resources to help them do so. Our partners bring unparalleled reach downwards to adult and youth organisations, outwards to networks and umbrella groups, and upwards to national policy makers and EU level stakeholders

The global community is realising how critical it is for women to participate in leadership positions. The UN has cited “ensuring women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic and public life” as Sustainable Development Goal 5. SHINE partners work with women every day, women that create and contribute to thousands of vibrant, visionary organisations.Women remain absent from key positions to shape access to and control resources. In the UK and Ireland, women make up more than two-thirds of the voluntary sector. However, women account for only 37% of managers, 30% of board members and 19% of senior executives. Italy faces similar statistics. Despite this particular sector valuing social justice, there is significant gender inequality and barriers to leadership in the sector. Sweden is a gender equality role model from which we can transfer learning. Leadership education on offer is skewed towards those with higher education or live in an urban area. SHINE project will address this by developing leadership training that is wholly responsive to the needs of women from all socio-economic, ethnic and geographic backgrounds.SHINE will upskill women with the knowledge and behaviours necessary to confidently and successfully transition into leadership roles in their third sector /community workplace.SHINE targets female staff of nonprofit sector organisations who have not traditionally had access to leadership training because they work for smaller organizations with small/non-existent training budgets live in areas with no access to specialist training provision, come from disadvantaged backgrounds economically and/or have few formal qualifications, form part of a minority or immigrant community and women that can transfer these leadership skills in the private or public sector.SHINE also targets EDUCATION PROVIDERS (VET colleges, enterprise agencies, local authorities, HEIs) who recognise the value of training future leaders in 3rd sector, but lack understanding of the macro need, their role as changemakers and the pedagogical strategies to teach others.THIRD/NONPROFIT SECTOR ORGANISATIONS who wish to invest in the professional development of their female staff, offering career progression and opportunities for public leadership at each level: informal (early-career workers with leadership potential), emerging (people who are first time management), strategic (managers in charge of other managers).GENDER EQUALITY ADVOCATES, female empowerment networks, regional skills authorities who wish to promote holistic approaches to working with communities and causes, focusing on changing mindsets and promoting local solutions to women’s leadership challenges.The immediate result of the SHINE project is the development, implementation and mainstreaming of targeted training resources to fulfil women’s potential as future leaders. The first tangible results of the project are the intellectual outputs, which work together to address the gaps in attitudes, policy, knowledge and skills that organisations need to move towards more inclusive practices:IO1: SHINE Reach and Teach VET Educators ToolkitIO2: SHINE Strengthening Female Community Leaders Open Education ResourcesIO3: SHINE Digital Transformation Best Practice Compendium At an individual level, women develop their ‘voice’ and are confident about taking on greater challenges in their professional careers and in their communities, they understand leadership skillset and components of effective leadership in contemporary communities and identify areas of professional and civic development and they possess the practical skills to exercise leadership for positive change in their communities: problem-solving, communication, collaboration, creativity etc. Community/3rd Sector impact: -Greater number of women and diversity in decision-making roles - Increased participation in community projects as women engage, enthuse and enrol more actors in the community in their work and their missions - Participants will be able to use digital tools to transform and future-proof their organisations.Through our training and dissemination process, the project will then produce the following results within its lifespan:• 300 trainers acquire new transversal skills in women leadership and the exchange of good leadership practices and go on to empower hundreds of women working in the third sector• 150 educators working in the VET sector will participate in the SHINE user testing, assisting the optimisation of the resources as well as priming them for the immediate rollout of the Teaching Resources in partner organisations• 1,000+ community, public and economic leaders will download and use the Practice Guide, Assessment tool and Teaching Resources and use them to extend and improve their training services to work with emerging female leaders.

E-CAFE addresses some of the key areas of actions of the EU: Providing high quality learning opportunities for low-skilled/low qualified adults, supporting an entrepreneurial mindset as well as social inclusion.Individuals are increasingly forced to take over greater responsibility for advancing their competence and their careers. This shift from a traditional educational system and company directed learning environment to a more individualized focus poses particular challenges for low-skilled adults and migrants (ECIE 2019 – 14th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship). The potential of these groups in terms of business start-ups is undisputed - but they need targeted support to meet these challenges.E-CAFE makes an important contribution in this respect. In terms of a comprehensive, integrated and sustainable approach, the project not only develops target group-specific learning resources for the development of an entrepreneurial mindset and viable business concepts, but also creates inspiring learning environments with low entry barriers, positive role patterns and peer-to-peer learning.Experts are increasingly speaking of a renewed impending economic crisis. This crisis will hit the European economy - which has just largely recovered from the previous crisis - particularly hard. This is particularly true for low-qualified people, being especially vulnerable in this regard. While entrepreneurship support justifiably occupies a special position in European policies, special attention should especially be paid to the group of low-qualified adults.Based on our daily experience and many projects with adult education, social and economic inclusion bodies, start up consultants and support infrastructures, we are realising a great demand for this topic area. To achieve this, we have adapted the successful methodology of Language Cafes developed and sustainably established by our project partner BURGED to the context of Entrepreneurship. Building on this, we will develop a set of resources which picks up the target group at their respective level of knowledge and converts innovative learning concepts into simple language and makes them adaptable without hurdles.To guarantee the widest possible use, we involve adult education organisations, trainers, NGOs and support structures (incubators, chambers e.g.) in our work and enable them to professionalise themselves and their services. Specifically, we will:1- deveopl a comprehensive toolbox, which presents state of the art methods for the development of an Entrepreneurial Mindset and for business model development and designed in a supportive simple and easy to understand way (IO1)2- Establish 4 Entrepreneurship Cafes, providing a target group specific, inspiring, low-threshold learning environment and develop a blueprint handbook that enables other organisations beyond the participating partner regions to implement the methodologies (IO2)3-Develop an interactive APP (IO3) working as both, content dissemination platform as well as interactive exchange and calendar/location tool, ensuring wide and free access of all produced resourcesIn doing so, the project addresses the following needs of our target groups and will create sustainable impact for them:a) Low Qualified Adults as future entrepreneurs will develop an entrepreneurial mindset and gain the relevant knowledge to develop business ideas and implement sustainable business conceptsb) Adult education organisations, trainers, and support structures such as chambers or incubators are put in a position to sustainably professionalise their services and increase their impact. c) By actively supporting potential founders in setting up their companies, we create an important impact for the regional economy. Against the background of networked value chains across the EU this will also impact the economy at national and EU level.d) Project partners will acquire new strategies, tools and methods for improving the effectiveness of their services. They will improve their own competences in knowledge sharing and strategic relationship building and have a clear understanding of how to sustain and grow the project in the long term.The results of the project are basically universal and, in combination with our multidimensional impact and dissemination strategy, will have a sustainable effect beyond the partner regions.

Context:The importance of developing entrepreneurial skills in young people is well established as both a means to economic growth, as well as to enabling young people to achieve the goals they set out for themselves. With the emergence of innovative social enterprise models, now more than ever entrepreneurship programmes can empower young people to generate positive impact at individual and community level. However, while enterprise centres & VET institutions struggle to engage with young people, tens of thousands participate voluntarily in youth group activities, especially in the creative, performing & digital arts, presenting a clear opportunity to widen the impact of entrepreneurship education. The problem? The majority of youth workers, lack the knowledge, skills & confidence to teach entrepreneurship. The YEA project was carefully structured to find new ways of integrating high quality entrepreneurship training into existing youth services & structures by training youth workers in the field of creative, performing & digital arts. The YEA project set out 2 key objectives to achieve: 1.Integration of entrepreneurship training into youth services & the promotion of entrepreneurship as a transversal skill 2.Forge an effective & replicable model to provide the learning and structureParticipating Organisations:YEA was delivered by 6 orgs from UK, Ireland, France & Malta with a strong cross-sector focus:1.Dungannon Enterprise Centre (Lead) - Principal supplier of entrepreneurship education & training in Northern Ireland2.RIDC - Hub organisation working for community development & responsible for youth work services in Roscommon, Ireland3.Beam Creative Network - Youth work org engaging over 200,000 young people in arts&drama programme, exploring issues such as diversity, cultural identity & conflict resolution. 4.Momentum - Accredited enterprise training centre with a specialisation in online & blended learning5.Musique de Nuit Diffusion - Cultural centre in Bordeaux working with disadvantaged youth.6.Vismednet - Maltese youth work organisation whose programmes emphasise the validation of informal & nonformal learningDescription of undertaken main activitiesOver the course of 24 months (October 2015 to September 2017), the YEA partnership achieved its objectives through 4 key Intellectual Output (IO) deliverables: •IO1 Establishment of 4 sustainable, sector focused Regional Alliances to study & capture best practice in the development of Youth Enterprise through Arts. These Regional Alliances brought together key youth, enterprise, & social policy stakeholders to explore best practice in integrating entrepreneurship education into creative arts youth work, devising individual & collective commitments to action in a YEA Action Plan.•IO2 Creation, publication & promotion of the “Youth Entrepreneurship through Arts Tool kit” to encourage the creation of further Alliances across Europe. The “Toolkit to guide the establishment of a YEA Alliance” focuses on “how-to” strategies to mobilise a diverse group of stakeholders from youth work & creative arts orgs to work together & explore the creative arts as powerful conduits to engage young people in new entrepreneurship approaches.•IO3 Creation & publication of a course curriculum for Youth Workers, Vocational Education Teachers & Community & Economic Development Practitioners to effectively engage the young people they work with in entrepreneurship education & help them explore their innovation & enterprise skills through arts.•IO4 Development of an intensive blended learning “Youth Enterprise through Arts” online course based on open education resources. Results and Impact attained:YEA represents a new generation of project that treats entrepreneurship as a transversal skill & a mind set which empowers young people to recognise & solve problems, create value & design sustainable initiatives. Such an approach can be used in any field the young people chooses to apply it to, creating innovation in private or public sectors, at individual or community level. As a result of the project:•hundreds of young people (18-30 yr olds) strengthened their entrepreneurial mindset & acquired concrete entrepreneurial skills, manifested in the development of a proposal for a cultural project or creative initiative which were innovative, sustainable & ready to attract funding•Enterprise providers found new ways of engaging with hard-to-reach young people, often from disadvantaged backgrounds•Youth work & Creative Arts organisations acquired key skills to integrate entrepreneurship mindset & skills as part of their services•Communities experienced increase in social & knowledge capital, with young people more empowered as leaders of change in general, especially those who go on to successfully implement their cultural project.•Stakeholders in the region understand & actively support integrated approach to ensure high

Entrepreneurship skills provide young people with a route to business creation, self-employment and financial empowerment; social entrepreneurship can empower them to generate positive impact in their community; and entrepreneurial thinking encourages innovation and resilience in all spheres, personal and professional. As our economy and society undergo transformation, these qualities are important for all young people. However, they are especially important to those who face discrimination or difficulty in seeking traditional employment, especially young women and especially those from immigrant and ethnic minority backgrounds. Empowerment through Enterprise (ETE) was based on the premise that we can –and must– do more to build entrepreneurial skills among this capable group of young people. However, it also recognized that VET providers of entrepreneurship education are currently ill-equipped to do so: today’s entrepreneurship courses are inclusive on paper only - in reality they often inhibit the participation of young women from diverse backgrounds and the content and delivery is so far removed from their experience that the courses are ineffective in leading to the expected outcomes. Therefore, ETE aimed to drastically improve the access to and quality of entrepreneurship education within the context of inclusion and diversity so as to unlock the potential of young people, especially female immigrants. We worked with partners from across the spectrum of entrepreneurship education (VET), youth work and community groups to: i) Develop a “REACH AND TEACH” CATALOGUE (IO1) presenting good practice to engaging with young people from minority groupsii) Used this to create a CURRICULUM AND CLASSROOM COURSE MATERIALS (IO2) that established objectives, assessment techniques and content and lesson plans.iii) Converted the latter into an OPEN ONLINE COURSE (IO3) that teaches those skills onlineiv) Rigorously tested and optimized the resources in collaboration with our target users and then DISSEMINATED them widely them to maximise their use. Each partner was assigned leadership of the output or activity corresponding to their specific field of expertise and experience, but all organizations were involved in all tasks. On completion, ETE produced the linkages, the knowledge and the resources to enable enterprise centres, colleges, and organizations across the youth and migrant services sectors to drastically improve access to and quality of entrepreneurship education for young women in the context of diversity and inclusion. - YOUNG WOMEN who were previously excluded or marginalized in the labour market, will now be empowered to unlock their professional and personal capabilities. Some will go on to create businesses, many will use their entrepreneurial skillset for other employment or community benefits. - COLLEGES AND ENTERPRISE CENTRES and other VET providers will have gained greater awareness regarding the importance of inclusive entrepreneurship education and new and improved resources to cater to the needs of disadvantage groups through the lense of inclusion, diversity and intercultural integration. - YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS and MIGRANT SERVICES will now understand the value of entrepreneurship skills thanks to new relationships with VET organizations, and will be able to refer beneficiaries to the open, online course as an immediate path for training and career development.- PROJECT PARTNERS will now be the first to benefit from the ability to integrate new approaches to inclusive education and their work in synergy with organizations from other sectors. Staff can now appreciate the more modern, professional environment and are now more capable of work on high scale international collaborative projects.- WIDER STAKEHOLDERS from across the youth, VET and community services sectors are now exposed to new forms of inclusive entrepreneurship education and are more likely to commit to more practical strategies for improving inclusion and diversity on a wider level.- COMMUNITIES will now see a rise in entrepreneurship and innovation among young people and benefit from the increased social integration and cohesion that comes from enabling young women to play a productive role in the economy and society.