Open to reuse
This project is a toolbox
The workshops documented in this site and the document system that supported the project are freely available for other organisations to adapt and reuse. If you are planning a youth exchange on entrepreneurship or a similar topic, you are welcome to draw from our workshop designs, our master link document structure, and our approach to dissemination planning.
Project
Full title
Future Entrepreneurs
Programme
Erasmus+ KA152 — Youth Exchanges
Host organisation
interEST NGO, Estonia
Dates
22–28 August 2025 — 7 full days
Venue
Jõulumäe Recreational Sports Centre, Pärnumaa, Estonia
Participants
60 total — 8 youth and 2 group leaders per country
Age range
13–17 years old
Topics
Entrepreneurship education · Community development · Youth competitiveness
Partners
Estonia (host)
interEST NGO — participants from summer camps and public applicants, ages 13–17
Hungary
Közgazdasági Politechnikum Alternatív Gimnázium — Budapest gymnasium, ages 16–17
Bulgaria
Community for Democratic Education — Sofia democratic school, ages 15–16
Spain
Asociación Las Niñas del Tul, Granada — youth from Málaga and Barcelona areas, mainly ages 15–16
Latvia
New East — Rēzekne gymnasium, ages 17
Finland
Keuropa — Finnish scouts organisation, ages 13–14
Project goals
International communication
Promote intercultural understanding through teamwork and cultural programme, fostering cooperation opportunities and idea exchange
Active participation
Strengthen young people's active participation in civil society and their sense of responsibility for their community's wellbeing
Entrepreneurship
Develop young people's initiative and courage to start their own projects and take responsibility for their future
Local impact
Contribute to improving the local living environment through active youth involvement and initiative
Erasmus+ awareness
Introduce the opportunities of the Erasmus+ programme to young participants
8 key competences
Develop the EU key competences framework and help participants recognise their own learning and personal development
Measurable targets set in application
Business model
At least 90% of participants produce an initial business model or community initiative plan in groups of four during the exchange
Confidence
90% of participants feel greater confidence about realising their entrepreneurial ideas after the project, assessed by pre/post self-evaluation
Follow-up action
5 of 6 country groups carried out a dissemination initiative at home — Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Spain, and Estonia all completed activities. Finland did not deliver.
What we learned
Group leader relationships matter most
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The single strongest predictor of participant engagement and post-project follow-through was whether the group leader already knew their participants before the project. Groups assembled through an open public call consistently showed lower cohesion and weaker dissemination outcomes than groups led by teachers or youth workers with an existing relationship with their young people. We will prioritise this in all future projects.
Narrowing the age range to 14–17
›
The 13–17 range proved too wide in practice. The gap in maturity, language confidence, and ability to engage with abstract entrepreneurship concepts between a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old is significant enough to create uneven group dynamics. Future projects will target 14–17.
Set volunteer roles before arrival
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Assigning specific helper roles to participants and group leaders in advance — decorators, game masters, firestarters, film producer, DJ, and others — removed a large number of coordination decisions from the organiser during the event itself. The blog post noted this directly: pre-assigning roles made the exchange run substantially more smoothly than it would have otherwise.
Less workshops, more free time
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The final evaluation was unambiguous: participants wanted more free time and fewer workshops. This is worth taking seriously when designing the programme — the connections formed during unstructured time are part of the value, not a break from it.
Keep the uncomfortable moments mandatory
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On day 5, participants were told that the following day they would pitch their ideas to real local entrepreneurs and a public speaking club in Pärnu. They expressed discomfort and asked for it to be voluntary. The organiser held firm with small concessions. Afterwards, participants left with greater confidence and the meeting was remembered only with positive words. The blog post reflects: life can be uncomfortable, and public speaking usually is — but development happens through practice.
Build on shared outputs across workshops
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Multiple workshops independently asked groups to generate new business ideas, which felt repetitive by day 5. A better approach is to design workshops as a chain: ideas generated on day 2 get marketed on day 3, pitched on day 4, and stress-tested on day 5. Mixed international teams formed early in the project can carry through multiple sessions rather than being reshuffled each time. Reusing teams and outputs across workshops creates continuity and lets participants go deeper rather than starting from scratch every session.