Liceul Tehnologic “Sfânta Ecaterina”
Project No.: 2019-1-RO01-KA229-063748 , from the ERASMUS+ program with the title “ European civic attitude through social entrepreneurship ”;
The role of entrepreneurial education in formating the student and solving social problems
- The concept of social entrepreneurship as part of the business environment.
- Aspects of social entrepreneurship in Romania.
- The mission and impact of social entrepreneurship.
- The student in relation to solving social problems.
- The curriculum .
Social entrepreneurship is different from the traditional one because of its purpose. Social entrepreneurship aims to generate profit in order to transform it into social capital that will ensure sustainable development of society.
It is more difficult to define social entrepreneurship, but the most important aspects are the following:
1) Social entrepreneurship does not aim to make substantial profit for investors or for itself. Instead, it seeks to produce social changes for the benefit of a single group of people or even of the whole society. neglected or very vulnerable who do not have the financial means to solve their problems.
Businesses developed by social entrepreneurs also generate profit, but they also contribute to social good.
2) Social entrepreneurs are those people who choose to answer social needs that the national social assistance system is not able to cover.
Social enterprises are economic operators that operate in the sphere of social economy and are distinguished by the benefits they bring to the community.
Those social enterprises benefit the community, they are predisposed to innovate, they are addressed to the socially excluded people, offering them opportunities for volunteering, training and even employment. Young people are the first to respond to these types of concepts because they will create the economy of the future. .
Social entrepreneurship in Romania is in its infancy, although there is a great potential for its value. First of all, the inefficient and restrictive legislative framework represents the real challenges for this field.
Following a study at European level it was found that the social entrepreneurship environment in Romania is composed of 53% women and 47% men being the only one in Europe with this structure.
17% of innovators work in the field of social inclusion, 17% in education, 15% in civil involvement, 7% in health, 14% in other fields connected to the above.
Although it is in an early social stage in Romania, social entrepreneurship supports a variety of ideas and challenges. The large urban centers – Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj and Timisoara offer the most possibilities for social business development.
The mission and impact of social entrepreneurship in the communities in which it is active is also noticed by the fact that more and more business people are interested in the social impact of the investments made, especially since in the last years there are some favorable legislative elements (for example: Employment of unemployed means the reduction a certain tax rate for the employer), unemployment being a social problem with real impact.
According to experts, social entrepreneurship needs three pillars to develop:
- People – the ability of your business to support people’s lives, to develop sustainable communities.
- The planet – that is, the impact on the environment.
We need a healthy planet and as much pollution reduction as possible.
3) Profit – Like any ordinary business, social entrepreneurship must have a profit in order to pay employees and develop different projects.
In the same order of ideas, the impact and mission of social entrepreneurship are complex. He chooses to highlight people who need help in front of potential donors (people with disabilities, elderly, single mothers) or through the activity to create an inclusive working environment. or uses non-polluting methods.
An example of financing and a successful business in this regard may be the one given at Rosia Montana, the space where most of those who worked on gold mining remained unemployed. There is now a social entrepreneur who created a business with Rosia brand wool socks. Montana.These are carried by the inhabitants from here, a part of the profit leads to them and they are helped to live better in the absence of the gold exploitation, which would endanger the environment.
The central problem of this presentation is the student related to the social problems they face.
In this context he is acquainted with all the stages of building a business plan, theoretically speaking, in school.
At 16 he has the maturity necessary to identify social problems in the family and society and even get involved. This involvement can be presented in the form of identifying the definite problems, engaging in a volunteerism that shapes his personality and attitude towards the student’s work.
The student is from the point of view of the educator, the adult in training and can be even, later an entrepreneur with the chance to develop a business. It depends on the support offered equally by the school and the family, but also the society. the theoretical basis is laid, practically his involvement and responsibility comes later. What he studies at the courses represents the theoretical basis for what he will later choose in collaboration with family and school. It is very important to teach the students to think in pragmatic, applied terms, to pose problems and to seek ways to solve and raise awareness of social problems – poverty, unemployment, school dropout, etc.
If he later choose social entrepreneurship he will have to consider both its purpose as a profit, but also for helping certain disadvantaged categories, vulnerable to solving social problems.
In a first stage he can volunteer to know the real problems of the space where he lives, and the school offers the necessary support in this regard. Volunteering leads the investor to a better investment, to accountability, to identifying some real real problems. it also means seeking solutions that can later have a social impact to the extent that the knowledge provided by the educational system, supporting the family and society will work.
Specifically, I can exemplify with a student from our school who at 10 years old when studying entrepreneurial education was involved in the terminology related to the business plan and its application, the financing of the business and the ethical principles that both the entrepreneur and the employees must respect.
This student has the theoretical basis offered by the school study, he also has an example of good practice offered by his family, which has accessed non-reimbursable European funds and set up a beekeeping enterprise. Because he has solid theoretical knowledge, the family motivates him and has the opportunity to work next to them, he decided in the 10th grade that he wants to try to lay the foundations of a future business. The family offered him two bee families that he valued, got involved and took care of them alone to help them. multiply.
What is positive and encouraging in this situation is the fact that this student understood that he can help from what he gets as a beginner entrepreneur. He started a collaboration with the kindergarten in the locality and offers honey to the children who need this product periodically. . Here’s how he understood to reason with the problems of some categories of disadvantaged children and later to outline, why not, a social enterprise that can offer jobs to people in the community in which he lives.
Another eloquent example was given by a student who volunteered from the moment of admission to high school. Active at World Vision being a special example for others. In this situation we could not notice that the impact of school education on her training, emotional support that the family offered and not lastly the character and personality of this young woman who understood the work very early in all its aspects.
Both students through what they did have achieved an increase in self-esteem which represents a plus in their subsequent evolution.
Entrepreneurship Education Curriculum
Strengths:
This discipline was introduced through the work plan for the implementation of educational and vocational training systems in Europe for 2001-2010. (Barcelona 2002)
The existence of this field of study is justified by:
- Descriptive-Informational size-business scrolling and success.
- Legislative dimension-the legal rules governing the business.
- The size of the practice-which is the most important and aims at the formation of entrepreneurial behaviors.
The novelty is related to the following positive aspects:
-Some of the learning units are oriented towards the applied pragmatic side.
-The content units are in direct cohesion with the competences that the teacher seeks to develop in the case of students.
-Curriculum accentuates the cognitive dimension of learning and reunes it with the affective-emotional and moral.
-This curriculum is now a way for the learner to adapt to the evolving economic and legislative realities.
Weaknesses:
– Based on it, the textbook is designed and the instructional-educational process is developed, being structured into four learning units and has been in force for at least 10 years.
-We consider that this syllabus is very general, little applicable and does not offer working instructions for the student who is now studying the theoretical bases of the object of study.
– The term, the notion of social entrepreneurship is missing from the program and no reference is made to its study.
-This discipline has a very specific purpose: to introduce the students to the knowledge of the theoretical bases of entrepreneurship, but it does not offer the students the necessary support to determine them to think about a future job, about social insertion.
– From this point of view, it is deficient because it does not offer the full support of these students and I think that you should rethink on a pragmatic basis that the student, his family should be sensitized on a future job.
– The student is not considered an active part in this program, although everything should be centered on the student and his future evolution, so it is not supported.
– The term of volunteering is also foreign to the program; it is practiced at school only in the case of temporary initiatives – it is not permanent.
– Finally, I think this program could be adopted and it would be better structured if it were guided by the biblical precept of „giving the hungry person the tool, not the fish“.
-Updated, because social problems have changed radically: demographic decline, population migration in areas where there are jobs or even outside borders.