Welcome to the ECO-SystemApp online training course for entrepreneurship educators. Entrepreneurship education does not only mean preparing students to become entrepreneurs. As a key competence for lifelong earning, entrepreneurship education (EE) should prepare students to face real life challenges once they finish formal education. Possession of key competences ensures more flexibility in the labour force, allowing it to adapt more quickly to constant changes in an increasingly interconnected world. Hence, "Entrepreneurship" is recognized as a key transversal skill that ENHANCES EMPLOYABILITY and contributes to the EUROPE 2020 OBJECTIVE OF SMART GROWTH (obtain a 75% employment rate for people aged 20-64 by 2020-by getting more people into work). Therefore, in times of the economic crisis, it is more than ever vital to offer entrepreneurship education to everyone by contributing to the objective of the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action plan of integrating it into ALL EDUCATIONAL LEVELS.
Entrepreneurship education in the framework of regions that aim at smart growth, calls for MORE COOPERATION AND COHERENCE and demands that educators are equipped with the ADEQUATE SKILLS, COMPETENCES AND TOOLS THAT BOOST SYNERGIES between stakeholders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and allow CROSS-SECTORAL SPILL-OVERS. There is a TRAINING NEED FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATORS to enable them to cope with these new trends that smart growth entails and provide them with competences and methodologies to deliver up-to date entrepreneurship education.
ECO-SystemApp, as MULTI-SECTOR project, respond to this need by adopting a SYSTEM APPROACH that considers all those stakeholders of the ecosystem that are involved in providing support for entrepreneurs as TARGET GROUP by recognizing them as ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATORS, namely: teachers, trainers and educators from all educational levels, businesses, public authorities and Civil Society organizations (associations, foundations, youth organizations).