GGEE – Going Green in Entrepreneurship Education

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Going Green in Entrepeneurship Education

Addressing Global Challenges Together

The problems we face nowadays all over the world, so also in the European Union are similar and can be addressed better together. They have been clearly presented as UN 17 Global Sustainable Development Goals.

Empowering Business Leaders for Change

One of the main key actors in this process is business people. They are the ones who are often blamed for bringing the World near to the final crisis. In some sense and case, it is true, but they are also the people whose positive impact can make a great change. For this, a big change in their action, but even more in the thinking pattern of the young business generation has to be made. Attitudes are formed in childhood and youth much more easily than among elderly people. So these competencies have to be developed at schools.

Focus on Sustainability and Responsible Consumption

The main problems that this project is addressing are Sustainability, Responsible Consumption and all environmental problems. It all can be done via Partnerships between European countries using entrepreneurship education and financial literacy programs already in use in partner countries. So reach to young people can be guaranteed for 100 per cent.

Promoting Green Business Ideas in JA Programs

Environmentally friendly production has been mentioned in the JA Company programme in countries but it has not been a systematic approach and has to be worked through more thoroughly. For example in Estonia about 15% of mini-companies with green ideas are focused on environmentally friendly ideas. This number can be increased with special methods in the idea creation phase. But having green ideas is not the only way of handling the pollution problem and climate change when teaching entrepreneurship to students. Not only companies with green ideas but ALL mini-companies have to think in an environmentally friendly way. It is easier to do it together in a consortium of European JA organisations who are the leading actors in teaching entrepreneurship in European schools. For this curricula and study programs have to be developed, teachers and teacher trainers have to be trained for using updated programs and the impact of these programs has to be measured.

Poject Timeline

The Five Main Directions in the project

Update Programs

Developing updates for entrepreneurship education programs used in lower secondary and upper secondary academic schools and VETs

Develop Active Learning Materials

Developing and sharing active learning materials for teaching these updates (idea creation tools, motivational games, games and activities for teaching entrepreneurship in an environmentally sustainable way)

Training Trainers

Training teacher trainers in using green entrepreneurship methods.

Measure Changes

Developing a tool for measuring the changes in students’ mindsets.

Dissemination Events

Dissemination events all over the countries.

Intellectual Outputs

July 13-15
2022
The first Management Meeting and Learning and Training event of GGEE

Partners gathered in Tallinn to discuss our main challenge – How to make entrepreneurship Education more environmentally friendly and encourage the generation of future business leaders to focus more on sustainable development.

As we met for the first time, we got to know each other, shared our earlier experiences and confirmed our common values. We started with demonstrating the activities about teaching green entrepreneurship that we already had. As the first thing for each company is a business idea, we tried some of them that focus on getting green ideas. We also tried through on-line brainstorming methods like Tricider. Still participants’ favourite brainstorm method was a hands-on activity that was introduced by Estonian trainer Aljona Kantor. She used LEGOs for finding and expressing new ideas. The green concept here was that not only an idea has to be environmentally friendly, but also teaching process must consider these aspects. As almost all homes with children (and many schools) have already LEGOs, it is easy to use them in entrepreneurship studies and not buy new things o ruse too much paper.

We were lucky to have the European student company competition in Estonia at the same time. Participants visited the trade fair part, spoke to students, analysed their product ideas and behaviour. We found confirmation to our idea that students use only some aspects of environmentally friendly entrepreneurship but have never thought through the whole process.

We made a working plan for the next meeting and training in Lithuania.

October 7-10
2022
Vilnius, the cleanest City one can imagine!

The second GGEE meeting took place in Lithuania and was organised in the office of SEB, the most environmentally friendly building in Lithuania and one of the greenest one in Europe. We were amazed about the construction of the house that was also very employee friendly and comfortable.

This time our training session looked through new methods that were found during the time when we worked at home. As the new school year had started already, many of us had already piloted some brainstorming and analysing methods that were introduced at the first meeting, and we were happy to get very good feedback from students.

At the first day we tried some simulations about the relationship between business profits and environmentally friendly production and tried to find the best solution in our discussions. It was really educating experience for all of us.

The second day was devoted to a long simulation about optimisation as the best way for growing profits but also decreasing the environmental impact. This simulation was called Factory in a Classroom and we all enjoyed it a lot. But during the discussion at the end of the day we found that it is too complicated to use it in the classroom as it demands a lot of materials and is too long. Then we set a task for everybody: to develop a simulation using the same principles with less materials and less time. We expected everybody to give some input into it as it was not an easy task.

We listened to interesting environmental experts and had interesting discussions and groupworks. For the last day we invented a green City game which we piloted ourselves in Vilnius. The task was to make photos (and pick up and through away if one had gloves) all garbage seen on streets. When returning to the office we brainstormed how it would be possible to use this garbage as a resource for new products.

The only problem we faced here was that Vilnius was so clean that it was a real challenge to find at least some garbage to fulfil the task!

June 14-17
2023
Beautiful sunny Cyprus

Our third training and meeting took place in Cyprus. Again it started with presentations and not only – also visits to environmentally friendly enterprises. It convinced us once more, that when teaching entrepreneurship visits to green companies are a big MUST. If one sees and experiences the atmosphere there it has much more impact on the attitudes than thousands words.

When back in the training room we tried an old gold – de Bono’s thinking hats for evaluating our ideas but we did it from environmental point of view – and believe me, it was not easy at all. But the most important – we all are able to train our teachers to use this wonderful tool now.  

We also tried through a transportation game that can be used also with younger students for understanding for where our products come from, and to discuss then what is the ecological footprint of all it. And a dilemma – to go on with consuming food that does not grow in our region, try to grow it ourselves or give it up. 

The most difficult topic to find material was found to be green marketing as there is nothing like this in educational programmes, but neither in real businesses. When we looked materials for green marketing, then we found only tips how to market green products. For this meeting our Estonian partners had invented themselves some discussion topics and group works that were tried, amended and approved as very good ones.

The same about selling – JA Lithuania introduced ideas about developing selling pitch so that you really sell to people who need the product, not to everybody. It is also a very different paradigms from the classical sales pitch.

JA Cyprus took a lead in discussion how to change the Factory game into a green and shorter one. From different ideas we picked out our favourite LEGOs again and asked everybody to focus on this topic at home.

It was a very fruitful meeting and – of course it was such a fun to see our good friends again.

November 7-10
2023
Individual and teamwork in Portugal

On November 7-10, 2023 our last meeting was held in Portugal and we felt so sad about it, but we were happy that so much work was done. Still, some of the tasks were not finished yet.

We divided ourselves into groups and as a groupwork we analysed once more our materials about all the topics and found that a bit of theory was also not a bad idea. So, all partners wrote some parts of theory for the Teachers Guide. After that we tried some more exercises, learned to use SCAMPER for green analyses, spoke about smaller consumption.

JA Cyprus raised a problem of on-line selling and communication and its impact on environment that is often not considered. JA Portugal analysed the content of our on-line assessment tool – the content was approved with applause.

This was our last meeting, but we still had some work to do. The biggest one is compiling all these materials into one big guide, JA Estonia will take the lead. For this the new factory game (Log Factory) will be piloted and described. All other materials are ready. The second one is to find quickly a good programmer for the application so that all of it can be used already this spring at teacher trainings. We can do it!

January - October
2024
Dissemination Seminars in Countries

GOOD NEWS: GGEE Teachers Guide is ready and available

                GGEE Self evaluation tool for students is also ready

October
2024
Final Meeting

Online meeting with all partners.

Teacher's Guide

A teachers’ guide for adding environmental aspects to all elements of the company program.

Student mindset assessment tool

A self-assessment tool for students about the impact of new methods on the mindset of students.