£230k boost for UK university social enterprise training

As lead partner, and the only UK university, in an international consortium, the University has secured €265,000 which equates to approximately £230,000.

The money will be used to enhance educational facilities to help people involved in social enterprises gain industry expertise.

It’s part of a two year project led by Plymouth Business School academics, Jonathan Moizer and Jonathan Lean, along with Elena Dell’Aquila from the Faculty of Science & Technology.

The team will be working with European partners UNINA (University of Naples, Naples, Italy), Cork Institute of Technology (Ireland) and GeProS (a German Consultancy Company) to develop state of the art online tools.

A number of e-learning scenarios will be designed to enhance ‘soft skills’. Also known as interpersonal or people skills, these include team working, negotiation, communication, time management, active listening, assertiveness and proactivity.

The training product will be offered free of charge to social enterprises and other not-for-profit organisations across the European Union. Instructor support materials will be developed to allow trainers to easily use the product to help deliver the soft skills training scenarios.

Project Coordinator and Associate Professor in Business Operations and Strategy, Jonathan Moizer, said: “This is an exciting collaborative project which has the potential to benefit huge amounts of people, not only those involved in social enterprise but others studying in higher education settings.

“We anticipate that once the learning scenarios are finalised, we will also be able to integrate this learning resource into university level teaching.

“The training product provides a safe environment for people to ‘learn through doing’ where there are no real world consequences to their actions. It also allows trainees to re-play the scenarios in order to improve their soft skills.”

The grant, secured from the European Union Leonardo Fund, offers a range of opportunities for all sizes and kinds or organisations in the UK to get involved in European working.

ENDS