Entrepreneurship and social innovation: 4 appointments of 2 hours dedicated to all students enrolled at the University of Florence. The training is a preparation programme for the European project SEVERE – Social Enterprise Through virtual environments and remote entrepreneurship which aims to develop a transnational programme to cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets and skills in order to encourage active citizenship and social entrepreneurship. The SEVERE project is partnered by the University of Florence, through the PIN – Polo Universitario della Città di Prato.
At the end of the training, 10 interested students will have the opportunity to continue the course during the Summer School organised in the context of the project in Montpellier, France, in September 2021.
The training will take place on Tuesday 18 and 25 May from 14.00 to 16.00 and on Wednesday 19 and 26 May from 9.00 to 11.00 through the Zoom platform, registration is required (places available: 40).
Social entrepreneurship 2.0: students as innovators, universities as promoters
The increase in waste production and single-use plastics, the climate crisis and not least the crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic have highlighted the social, environmental and economic criticalities of workplaces and production systems. Digital media and the multiplication of remote sharing experiences, enhanced in the last year, offer unexplored solutions to try and give a more sustainable long-term direction to collaborative work in the European space.
The European project SEVERE – Social enterprise through virtual environments and remote entrepreneurship aims at combining the creative and innovative potential of European university students and the experience of social entrepreneurs to create a 2.0 workspace and expand both the physical and technological boundaries of social entrepreneurship.
Students from the University of Florence interested in joining the project will be involved in a training and mentoring programme together with students from partner universities – i.e. Glasgow Caledonian Univeristy (Scotland), Dublin City University (Ireland), Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Spain), Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal), Groupe SUP de CO Montpellier (France) – in order to create a student network.
The training and mentoring programme includes:
- Preparation programme organised by PIN – Polo Universitario della Città di Prato (to be held online in May 2021) during which the project, its objectives and student involvement will be presented. From these activities the ten most suitable participants will be selected to take part in the Summer School.
- Summer School by the Montpellier Business School (to be held in Montpellier if possible in September 2021) for the creation of ten collaborative projects between students from six different countries. The school will consist of ideation workshops to help students formulate their projects as well as further development of distance working techniques.
At the end of the Summer School, the ten groups will have designed a social innovation project. The ten projects will be developed remotely in the following year and monitored by the partner institutions. Students will be asked to record their progress through video diaries and to prepare a report at the end of the first year..
- Winter School by Dublin International University (to be held in Dublin if possible in March 2022). Representatives from each team will meet and have the opportunity to show their progress and activities.
- Pitching workshop after one year, project teams will participate and present their projects to potential investors and institutional stakeholders.
- Students will continue to develop their projects at a distance during the final year of the project, reporting regularly on progress and challenges faced. Once again, participants will be guided and monitored at a distance by partners, assessing the extent to which projects have been able to continue at a distance.
Gli appuntamenti di maggio 2021 per gli studenti dell’Università di Firenze
18 May 2021 14.00 -16.00
Social enterprise and social innovation
First steps to build a social enterprise or social innovation project
19 May 2021 9.00-11.00
Business and action models
The differences between business plan and project budget,
25 May 2021 14.00-16.00
Digital Social Innovation and remote working tools
Examples of social enterprises and social innovations enabled by digital tools
26 May 2021 9.00 – 11.00
Basics of branding and communication
Explanation of home exercise
Final Q&A
