Problem addressed

Entrepreneurship education is not perceived to be a priority in most European education systems. Opportunities to experiment with entrepreneurial ideas are rare in formal education. This gives young people little chance to develop their entrepreneurial competences and acquire valuable skills for their development and future entry into the labour market.

Innovative solution

DOIT is a European learning-by-doing programme, based on an innovative competence development approach. It aims to contribute to youth employment and to the creation of new jobs in the social economy by equipping pupils across Europe with entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, tools and experience. It does so through developing, testing and disseminating new learning approaches for early entrepreneurial education for primary and secondary school pupils (aged 6–16) and educators. The programme is implemented by a consortium of 13 partners from 10 Member States (Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Slovenia, Denmark, Croatia, Spain, Lithuania and Belgium). It began in October 2017 for a three-year running period.

DOIT’s innovative approach is centred around developing the entrepreneurial competences of young people themselves as outlined in the EU Entrepreneurship Competence Framework. To do so, it has brought together entrepreneurship education and social innovation experts to design innovative teaching methods that can encourage and empower young people to tackle societal problems through social innovation. These methods are applied during so-called ‘DOIT actions’: multi-day events, or a series of regular but shorter events for children, within a ‘makerspace’ setting. A makerspace is a physical location used as a workshop with a variety of tools including digital tools such as 3D printers. These makerspaces offer collaborative places for innovative forms of production and digital do-it-yourself work. DOIT is innovative in that it brings both children and adults into these makerspaces as co-workers, collaborating to co-create innovative solutions.

DOIT also provides educators and children with learning materials. DOIT toolboxes for educators provide pioneering teaching and workshop resources whilst the toolboxes for children are specifically designed to engage pupils with experimentation, design, prototyping and basic business modelling. The learning journey of the participants spans the whole cycle of social innovation, from identifying a local issue to presenting a co-created potential solution in public. All resources are easily accessible through the interactive DOIT web platform which includes webinars on different relevant topics and best practices on social innovation and entrepreneurship education.

DOIT also runs an online idea competition, open to all children in Europe, in order to increase its reach offline and online. The online competition invites children to describe their ideas as well as prototypes of how they could deliver digital social innovation.

Key results and benefits

The pilot projects across 10 European countries have reached 42 000 children and 20 000 facilitators over a three-year period in schools, innovation labs, makerspaces and social enterprises. DOIT’s wide reach, thanks to the range of tools, events and engagement possibilities, both online and offline, is one of the key successes of the project so far. The project is ongoing and results are being collected as the pilot projects are being monitored and evaluated.

The extent to which young people take a hands-on approach to entrepreneurship is one of the key results of the DOIT project. Young people aged 14–16 have participated in consortium meetings and hosted workshops to ensure that their voice is heard, and their views taken on board in the steering of project activities. In addition, over 50 success stories of young social innovators under the age of 16 are available to view on the project website. These feature innovative solutions to a variety of issues, such as preventing child deaths from overheating in cars and reflective accessories for young cyclists.

Potential for mainstreaming

The project is a Horizon 2020 Innovation Action. It has a broad dissemination strategy based on a growing network of supporters, including members of the European Parliament. This network of supporters will be used to transfer DOIT results and lessons learned to European stakeholders within the roll-out phase of the project (December 2019 to September 2020). The roll-out phase includes a massive open online course for DOIT’s facilitators and a virtual conference bringing together practitioners, multipliers, teachers and researchers to share experiences and strategies on innovative education for young people. The conference will showcase on-site practical experience by presenting various teaching and learning materials and by organising a train-the-trainer workshop.

Project partners have presented the DOIT methodology at several international conferences and published a number of scientific papers, including a paper on how to reach more girls in makerspaces for the 2018 EduRobotics conference in Rome. The project has also shared learning outcomes as part of European policy briefs that set out how the DOIT approach aligns with high-level policies, such as the Europe 2020 Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth.