The InnoSchool project tackles the need for system change to support weak entrepreneurial culture and low engagement to social innovation and entrepreneurship. Its general objective is to strengthen social innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of secondary schools’ students by developing and introducing a highly innovative Learning System. 

The first public event of the InnoSchool project took place in Liberec, Czech Republic, on 27th of September 2018, on behalf of DEX Innovation Centre, the lead partner. More than 40 people, from the Czech Republic and abroad, representatives of educational institutions, policy bodies, organizations working with people with social needs and similar projects in the fields of digital education and social entrepreneurship, gathered in KultiVAR, co-working place for artists and freelancers. During this event the InnoSchool concept was introduced to the public and the four guest speakers discussed the topic of motivating the secondary school students for social entrepreneurship as well as the current educational system and the use of digital technologies.

Before the public event, on Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th of September 2018, all partners of the InnoSchool project met in Jablonec nad Nisou, for their first internal and kick-off meeting. Besides the project management and coordination topics, it came out the need for research amongst secondary school students in order to establish the knowledge of what social needs they are interested in. According to the results of the research, the development of the serious game itself (a core innovative element introduced by InnoSchool) will be carried out by the Technical University of Kosice under the supervision of the Vienna Board of Education. InnoSchool is a project that combines serious interactive game, teacher guidance and lecturing and consequently improves the motivation of students for social entrepreneurship in involved European regions. Furthermore, the game will be interconnected with social media and the schools will compete against each other on a national level.

As part of the InnoSchool project all the countries had to host territorial kick-off events in their local language and with relevant stakeholders. The first two countries that had the kick-off events where Romania and Moldova on the 30th of October 2018.

Romania

The kick-off event for Romania took place in Oradea, the largest city in Bihor County and more than 30 participants took part in the event and demonstrated an active involvement in the debate topic: “Engagement and development of entrepreneurial spirit in high school students by using an innovative Learning System”, among them school directors and inspectors, representatives of Oradea City Hall and Bihor County Council, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, media representatives, school counselors and so on.

Mihaela Popovici, president of ACTA Center, and Simina Maria Miko, director of Center for Resources and Educational Assistance of Bihor County, opened the conference by presenting the steps in developing, piloting and implementing InnoSchool Learning System in Romania. Also, the impact of the project on the improvement of national curriculum was highlighted, tackling entrepreneurial culture and competences. The project initiative was highly appreciated and raised awareness for involvement in advisory group and piloting phase.

Republic of Moldova

At the same time in Moldova, „FACLIA” Association and the Ungheni Education Directorate launched „InnoSchool - Strengthening social innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of secondary schools’ students by using highly innovative Learning System”. Over 100 students from high schools, vocational schools and colleges from Ungheni, school principals and teachers, representatives of local public authorities, civil society organisations and mass-media attended the event.

Alexandru Ambros, Mayor of Ungheni, expressed his support for this initiative, mentioning that InnoSchool will touch upon the need for change in developing an entrepreneurial culture, stimulating the involvement and social innovation among young people. He also advised young people to be “the best” in what they do, he asked them to become responsible citizens, capable of contributing to the welfare of their community. The representatives of JCI Ungheni (Junior Chamber International Ungheni), Dionisie Ternovschi and Andrian Cheptonar, participants in the event, inspired the youth and advised them to make use of existing opportunities, to be creative and innovative, and to have the courage to apply their ideas in practice. 

Bulgaria

The next day, on the 31st of October 2018 in Blagoevgrad, took place the first public event in Bulgaria under the "Strengthening Social Innovation and Entrepreneurial Spirit of Secondary Schools’ Students by Using Highly Innovative Learning System", Innoschool project. The event was organized by the project partner Business Incubator - Gotse Delchev, Entrepreneurship Promotion Centre with the active support of the second Bulgarian partner - Regional Department of Education – Blagoevgrad and gathered more than 40 participants - teachers, school principals, representatives of public institutions, NGOs, media, stakeholders from different places of South-Western Bulgaria.

There were presented the objectives, innovative components and main activities of the project, the expected results and impact in the secondary schools. It was emphasized that the project is focused on the social innovation and entrepreneurship of secondary school students by developing, testing and introducing a highly innovative learning system (ILS InnoSchool), combining innovation to achieve attractiveness and educational impact. The participants took part actively in the discussion, shared their experience in student entrepreneurship and social initiatives and showed interest and zeal to be actively involved in the project.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

On behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Agency PREDA-PD organized the kick-off meeting and first public event on 27th November 2018 within the InnoSchool Project - "Strengthening Social Innovation and Entrepreneurial Spirit of Secondary Schools’ Students by Using Highly Innovative Learning System". The event was attended by representatives of educational institutions, local government, Ministry of education and culture of Republic of Srpska, business sector and relevant non-governmental organizations. The project manager Ms. Milena Gnjatovic Simatovic presented the project objectives and major activities related to involvement of secondary schools and teachers, NGOs, businesses and Ministry of education and culture. It was highlighted the importance of active participation of all relevant actors in order to help students gain relevant competences.

During the discussion, all participants were actively involved. It was stressed that it will be necessary to work on modernization of present curriculum related to entrepreneurship, in order to integrate serious game into schools in RS. Deputy of Minister of education and culture of RS, Ms. Radmila Kocic Cucic emphasized the support and role of the Ministry in implementation of the InnoSchool project and introduced the participants with activities that Ministry has been undertaking which can be a valuable input for development of innovative learning system in RS, such as standards of occupations. Professors are highly interested in any kind of improvement of educational sessions since they have been working with students and know what the major obstacles are. Business sector and NGOs representatives were thrilled with the project objectives and activities because they have been aware of issues in education, entrepreneurship and social needs. 

Serbia

Regional Agency for Development and European Integration Belgrade (RADEI Belgrade) hosted its first InnoSchool public event – territorial kick-off conference – on December 24, 2018 in Belgrade, Serbia. The event was opened by Ms. Snezana Radinovic, RADEI Belgrade Director.

RADEI InnoSchool project team, Ms. Biljana Joncic and Mr. Rafael Pupovac, presented the project and described its focus on strengthening social innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of secondary schools' students by developing and introducing a highly innovative InnoSchool learning system (ILS). They also spoke about ongoing and upcoming development of the initial ILS concept. The event was attended by secondary schools’ headmasters, teachers, representatives of local administration bodies, knowledge and R&D institution, media and the private sector.

During the open discussion, participants provided positive feedback regarding project’s expected impact on improvements in the national educational framework and high school curriculums regarding entrepreneurial education with focus on social entrepreneurship. Additionally, early inclusion of schools in the process of the innovative learning system’s development was affirmative and highly regarded.

Hungary

On the 15th of January 2019 took place the kick-off event in Hungary, organized by Central Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency Nonprofit Ltd., in cooperation with the Vocational Training Centre of Székesfehérvár. The event was hosted by the Széchényi István Technical School where the headmasters of the schools belonging to the Vocational Training Centre gathered to get to know more about the project, its aims and about the upcoming InnoSchool Learning System and the serious game. The main goal of the kick-off was to increase the involvement of local stakeholders into the project, especially the middle school teachers and headmasters of relevant schools.

The InnoSchool project is a result of an international cooperation. Members agree that the future environmental, social and economic challenges can be addressed by those enterprises which will be founded and led by today’s middle school students. However, entrepreneur culture is weak in Hungary and in other Central European states, especially compared to Western European measures. It is also well-known that the region also lacks those teaching modules that could be used as effective tools to increase knowledge of students and provide them with the necessary skills to become entrepreneurs.

Finally, it is going to be used to support economic and entrepreneurship teaching in middle schools. The game will have all the characteristics that middle school students would demand from such a tool: it will enable competition among different schools, including social media experience and finally, it’s going to be an exciting game. The game is going to be tested in real life school circumstances. The InnoSchool project gladly awaits the applications of middle schools interested in the first-hand use of the developed tool.

Slovakia

Slovakia was one of the countries that launched the InnoSchool project in not one but three events. The first one took place in the second week of November 2018, during the Week of Social Entrepreneurship. During this week in Kosice were held several workshops focused on various aspects of the topic. The events were thematically divided into several important topics directly related to social innovations. Discussed was active citizenship and motivation to engage in designing, testing and implementation of social innovation, cooperation of various stakeholders of quadruple helix, design thinking as approach in social innovation development etc.

One of the main topics was also social entrepreneurship, explaining different phases of social business, from the initial motivation and the preparatory phase, to its launch. Presented were various models of social business and how they differ from the classical ones. Almost 30 people from various fields were very actively discussing the future of social entrepreneurship in Slovakia and possible tools to support that and make it more popular. Presented were e.g. Regional Centre of Social Economy, representatives of towns and villages willing to found social enterprises to help people who have not been able to find a job for a long time, people operating enterprises which hired disabled persons and many other enthusiastic people, young, middle-aged and seniors, willing to help our society to face current social challenges.

The team from the Technical University of Kosice were also actively participating and they presented the InnoSchool project and the aims and planned activities of this project. The audience has positively commented on the InnoSchool project and its planned activities. All the participants agreed that there is a great need to raise awareness on the necessary solutions to social problems for young people who can find exceptional solutions for their creativity and thus have a great potential in the field of social entrepreneurship. Several attendees also showed an active interest in aiding in the design and implementation of future activities or disseminating information.

The second event in Slovakia took place on the 6th of December 2018, more exactly the Pro Educo 2018 Educational Fair took place in Košice (Slovakia) (http://www.proeduco.sk) and the project partner from Technical University of Košice could not miss it. This event was attended by more than 80 exhibitors and 8000 visitors during the 3-day program that started with the thematic conference called “Eastern Slovakia is not an EXIT” (Note: Slovak language uses the same word “východ” for Eastern and Exit) and continued with 2 days of exhibitions and presentations of secondary schools, universities and employers. The secondary schools are especially relevant for the purpose of the InnoSchool project and this year, more than 30 of them were present at the exhibition kiosk there. The main objective for this event was to inform the secondary schools about the planned activities of InnoSchool project, and to attract them for pilot testing phase. The second goal was to search for future members of the Advisory Groups. At the project level, these Advisory Groups play an important role in providing feedback during the process of Innovative Learning System development.

The last kick-off event in Slovakia took place on December 12th, 2018, during the Seminar on Social Entrepreneurship in Rožňava (Slovakia). The information seminar was held to provide practical information on purpose of social entrepreneurship and possibilities emerging from newly adopted Act Nr. 112/2018 Code on Social Economy and Social Enterprises. The event was organized by Agency for Support of Regional Development Kosice within national project funded by Government Office of the Slovak Republic. The event was attended by project team of Technical University of Košice to introduce the forthcoming InnoSchool activities.

Austria

The last country to host the kick-off event is Austria, in the near future. A local Viennese TV station will be presenting a TV-podcast on the topic “Entrepreneurship Education in Vienna” in cooperation with the Board of Education for Vienna. During this TV-podcast, activity at Viennese schools will be presented as well as EU co-funded projects (e.g. InnoSchool and others). The Austrian partner saw a good chance to increase the publicity for InnoSchool project, promote InnoSchool project/ILS to relevant stakeholders, offer schools an opportunity to present their existing entrepreneurial projects and use this occasion for the call for schools to participate in the InnoSchool pilot.