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Abstract

DOIT contributes to youth employment and to create new jobs in the social economy by nurturing in young pupils seeds for active social innovation: entrepreneurial mind-sets, knowhow and skills. The project empowers primary and secondary school pupils (6-16 years) alongside educators to apply open innovation methods, digital maker tools and collaboration skills to tackle societal problems. It will develop ground-breaking DOIT toolboxes for children as well facilitators, which provide complementary knowhow and support. They are designed for experiencing being a social innovator in mobile and fixed child-friendly makerspaces and are easily accessible at the interactive DOIT webplatform. Co-created with help of the Children’s Advisory Committee, DOIT novel resources cover inspirational experimentation, design, prototyping and basic business modelling knowhow needed for sustainable product and service innovation. The DOIT children’s social innovation and entrepreneurship programme is piloted and evaluated across 10 European countries (AT, BE, DE, DK, ES, FI, HR, NL, RS und SI), reaching 42.000 children and 20.000 facilitators in schools, innovation labs, maker spaces and social enterprises. It offers intergenerational workshops and training events targeted at different learner needs and learning settings. DOIT showcases how its child-friendly, intergenerational maker approach enables young people to acquire the manual, technological, intellectual and social skills they need to be active and initiate social good. DOIT’s online idea competition, open to all children in Europe, will inspire them to pursue an entrepreneurial career path. The project consortium comprises experienced actors across the social innovation value chain with links to related European initiatives fostering young entrepreneurship education. DOIT’s ambassador Network (currently more than 80 supporting institutions) and open educational resources will drive DOIT’s long-term sustainability and impact.

Objectives and overall aim of the project

DOIT (Digital fabrication and making for social innovators) is a European initiative that empowers Europe’s young innovators with the social entrepreneurial mindsets, tools and skills they need to thrive along their entrepreneurial learning journey within an open digital world and tackle future societal problems. Our main objective is to design, develop and test on large scale a novel Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Programme for children and educators based on the effective combination and child-friendly application of the pedagogical principles of digital making education, of open innovation methods and of using leveraging technology for generating and scaling sustainable innovations in social business and traditional enterprises. Our target groups are young learners (6 to 10 years), older pupils (11 to 16 years), their educators and trainers as well as entrepreneurs who will share their experiences with these audiences (mentoring).

The DOIT programme includes ground-breaking teaching and workshop resources (DOIT toolboxes for children and facilitators) coupled with innovative teaching and learning materials, in particular our platform’s open collaborative makerspace, which will be used to embed the necessary knowledge and skills of invention, design, prototyping and business modelling. The DOIT toolboxes are designed for experiencing being a social innovator in mobile and fixed children-friendly maker spaces and are easily accessible at the interactive DOIT Web platform. Co-created with help of the Children’s Advisory Committee DOIT novel resources cover inspirational experimentation, design, prototyping and basic business modelling knowhow needed for sustainable product and service innovation. The DOIT platform will provide an integrated platform and learning pathway, which will foster first experiences with entrepreneurial thinking, social innovation, and intergenerational and multidisciplinary work - the foundation for Europe’s future entrepreneurs. DOIT tests, demonstrates and validates this learning and personal development programme on a large scale within 10 diverse European countries (AT, BE, DE, DK, ES, FI, HR, NL, RS und SI) in cooperation with regional innovation labs, schools and business networks, addressing different topics.

Full rollout of DOIT will inlcude Lego Foundation (Partner 9), the Open Innovation Network (Erasmus Programme; Partner 2) and associated partners (e.g. ENIS-European Network of Innovative Schools, ENIS) and aims to attract attention of more than 150.000 professional innovation and teacher trainers.For teacher training institutions we offer the online DOIT facilitator training as Massive Open Online course (MOOC) and aim to involve and reach 20.000 initial and professional teachers with dissemination activities (e.g. final celebratory conference and showcases). Our rollout phase through already 80 committed education and teacher trainer institutions (LOI) is ambitious, but with robust proof-of-concept in this project, we intend to intensively cooperate with numerous trans-European education and networks to communicate the success of the programme and ensure that early entrepreneurship education becomes standard practice across Europe as a basis for higher youth employment.

With this selected approach the consortium expects to reach 5% of pupils in ISCED Level 1-2 (6-14) und 10% of pupils in ISCED Level 3 (14-16) within Europe after project end. Expected long-term impact is the awareness of foundation of enterprises and their requirements and to contribute to youth employment.

The DOIT children’s social innovation and entrepreneurship programme widens existing experiences and settingsof entrepreneurship education by:

  • Building on well documented experience in the field of making with children and open educational practices in makerspaces and other maker settings.
  • Extending the focus of making (ordinarily from idea development to a project result) to the whole process ofentrepreneurship. This includes early idea development, design thinking through construction and production to business plan modelling.
  • Focusing on sustainability, social issues and challenges, looking at social innovation and social entrepreneurship from the perspective of European children.
  • Fostering joint projects and collaborative work between children (peer learning); as well as with adult stakeholders from traditional business, social and services economies, volunteering schemes, teachers, parents, educators and other facilitators.
  • Following a strict participatory design processes as a basis for open innovation.