Seminar Social Entrepreneurship for Local Change Spring 2016
Introduction
The first online seminar was offered by the SELC Consortium from March to June 2016. This page documents the processes, assignments and outcomes of this first learning activity.
Video Documentation 2016
What was the course about?
A social entrepreneur applies business tools for solving social and/or environmental problems. Success in social entrepreneurship is primarily measured by degree of social impact, not only monetary profit.
Social entrepreneurs are essential for solving Europe’s economic, social, and environmental challenges. According to the Strasbourg Declaration of 2014, “Europe’s economic and social model needs to reinvent itself. We need growth that is fairer, greener and anchored in local communities. A model that values social cohesion as a genuine source of collective wealth.”
It is urgent that students and practitioners from different disciplines across Europe learn from each other to develop entrepreneurial skills and social awareness for a sustainable, local impact.
Social Entrepreneurship for Local Change is a programme offered by a 5-University Consortium in cooperation with relevant NGOs. The goal is to empower future social entrepreneurs through an interdisciplinary, problem-based learning environment that enhances the innovative competencies needed for addressing social, cultural and environmental challenges in Europe. The programme is funded by the ERASMUS* Programme in the period 2015 - 2018.
The Social Entrepreneurship for Local Change online course 2016 included twelve live sessions on the internet available to the wider global community, as well as interdisciplinary and international group work with students from Romania, Estonia, the Netherlands, and other European countries. The online course was open to anybody interested in the subject.
The programme also offered students the possibility to receive a grant to attend a 10-day workshop in Romania, hosted by the Bucharest University of Economic Studies.
Recordings and Resources
- All recordings from this first seminar are available as open educational resources
- They can be accessed via the ILIAS learning platform (no login required)
- Further references and learning materials are available from the Resources and Literature page
Course Content
The online module consisted of twelve 90-minute sessions of lectures, reading materials, collaborative group work and other diverse active and passive learning tools.
The thematic elements of the course were designed to give students core knowledge for developing their own start-ups:
- Identifying challenges and setting goals
- Designing ideas
- Designing your business model
- Revising and evaluating your model
Local Challenges
- The working process started with the participants identifying their local challenges.
- Virtual teams were then formed on the basis of related challenges. The teams designed a business soliton addressing this challenge.
- They further reflected on how the challenge could be addressed by that business model in their respective local context.
- Visit this page for an overview of the local challenges
Course Schedule and Minutes
- Online lectures took place from 29.03. – 21.06.2016, with weekly sessions on Tuesdays from 15 45 – 17 15 pm CET.
- See the full seminar schedule for speakers and topics.
- Each session has been documented, this can be reviewed in the seminar minutes
Virtual Teamwork and Collaborative Assignments
- Active participants completed three assignments both individually and in their international team.
- Please read more about assignment details in the detailed assignment description
- Have a look at the working group pages
- View the outputs of the participant teams
Intensive Study Programme
- The on site programme was hostedy by the Bucharest University of Economic Studies
- Read the full report of this workshop
Further information
ERASMUS+ Programme
