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10.000 students developed social businesses thanks to SE360

Bucharest, 1st of July 2016 – Social Enterprise 360 (SE360) is a European educational program in the field of social entrepreneurship, developed by Junior Achievement Romania in partnership with organizations from 7 countries and co-financed by the European Union through Erasmus+ program. More than 10.000 high school students from 373 schools, came up with 668 social business ideas with the help of the 507 teachers and more than 200 business consultants during the 2015-2016 period. 

Social Enterprise 360 European Summit, the closing event of the program, brought together in Bucharest, on the 30th of June, 47 students, teachers, volunteers, social entrepreneurs, representatives of educational and public national and European institutions, including members from the European Commission. 

The summit hosted discussions and presentations about the evaluation results and the impact generated by SE360 program, best case practice models, the best projects proposed in European competitions by the students and also about the experience and how was it perceived by the teachers, students and volunteers. Finally, possibilities to replicate the program in the future were discussed and taken into account. 

The guests were also involved in an interactive workshop moderated by Grameen Creative Lab, during which they had to think about solutions and debate regarding the impact generated through social entrepreneurship education and the interest and way of increasing motivation of the students and teachers in social entrepreneurship. The guests took into consideration the global assistance that could be offered by the public institutions and by enterprises during the implementation of these international educational programs. 

"I consider that the Social Enterprise 360 program has a remarkable potential for development and replication. I saw that the partners involved in the program took engaged to continue the implementation in the future, a fact that demonstrates the replication potential of the program. The young participants are a perfect example to promote the entrepreneurship in general, not only social entrepreneurship, because entrepreneurship means the involvement for solving issues faced by people and community." 

Simone Baldassari, Policy Officer, DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship & SMEs, European Commission. 

In Romania, the SE360 program started with a pilot in October 2015, at Cosma Partenie Economic College in Oradea, after which the initiative grew and reached more than 200 teachers and 4.000 high school students at national area, during the 2015-2016 school year. 

High School Principle Virgil Blage, talks about the implication of the high school in the SE360 program with enthusiasm: "SE360 program represents a step further in enhancing the changing power of entrepreneurial education. It raises the awareness towards the necessity to share profits with those in need for the benefit of us all." 

The participating students developed skills such as: team work, creative and critical thinking, self-esteem and they built up confidence in the potential to become future entrepreneurs and generate change in their society. The objectives and results obtained by the participating countries in this program are aligned to the new skills agenda for Europe elaborated by European Commission in June 2016, and the benefits acquired from the program are very important if we consider that recent studies show that 40% of the European employers state they cannot find potential employees with proper competencies that could help the companies to develop and be innovative and that few people have the mentality and proper entrepreneurial skills necessary for starting their own business and adapt to the dynamic changes of labor market.

Diana Filip, Deputy CEO – VP Marketing & Development JA Europe, expressed with enthusiasm her opinion regarding the general impact of the program: "97% of the students involved in SE360 are taking into consideration to start their own social business in the future. This is an important achievement obtained by implementing the program and a motivation for us to do more. SE360 should be included in the school curriculum."

The main intellectual outputs and other teacher training results obtained by conducting the program Social Enterprise 360 were:

• realizing an analysis of the entrepreneurship education status in partner countries (Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain);

• creating a sustainable and scalable social entrepreneurship curriculum for high school;

• creating an ecosystem for social entrepreneurship inside and outside school and exploitation of e-learning;

• building an evaluation system based on competencies – ESP exam, which gives students the opportunity to obtain a certificate of entrepreneurial skills recognized in 26 countries and supported by leading companies, higher education institutions, international organizations and the European Union;

• delivering trainings on social entrepreneurship for teachers and high school principals;

• developing an international high schools community, using a common set of tools, methods and best practices and an online learning platform.