Europe needs more young people with an entrepreneurial mindset and skills able to turn creative ideas into innovations that make our society more liveable and sustainable. Nourishing entrepreneurial young people has been on the agenda of educational policymakers and institutions in the European Union for many years. However, the addition of “Entrepreneurship” to traditional curricula and forms of teaching and learning has not generated convincing results (cf. the Eurydice report on “Entrepreneurship Education in Europe”, 2016). A more engaging and practice-based approach is needed to equip young learners with the mindset and skills needed by innovative citizens;
The project “DOIT – Entrepreneurial skills for young social innovators in an open digital world”, a H2020 Innovation Action, has trialled, evaluated and disseminated a novel approach for early entrepreneurship education in Europe. The DOIT learning programme has been developed for primary and secondary school pupils (6-16 years old). It fosters entrepreneurial and innovation skills that are applied in social innovation projects carried out in makerspaces. DOIT pursued and needed to achieve the following objectives:
1. Creating an empowering environment for young, digital social entrepreneurs and innovation education from an early age;
2. Nurturing innovation attitudes and skills in children and young people through digital fabrication and maker movement knowhow;
3: Bridging the gaps between makerspaces, schools, teacher training, entrepreneurship education and innovative entrepreneur networks;
4: Contribution to the creation of digital social innovation culture, higher youth employment, new markets and new jobs in the long-term;
The programme and an online-facilitator training course were scientifically validated by more than 1000 children and 1596 teachers in ten European regions (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Serbia) in two phases (10/2018 to 2/2019 and 4/2019 to 11/ 2019; course in 5/2020). The programme received very good evaluation results, for example it achieved increased creativity, self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions by the involved children.