What is SELF?

The objective of the Enterprising SELF project is to change the attitudes in society towards more enterprising and therefore improve regional competitiveness.

Enterprising education means relevant, inspiring, engaging education for every child and young person and it includes developing the “can do –will do” attitude

Enterprising education is a concept through which young people will become successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors.

Enterprising Education in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Finland (Enterprising SELF) is a 3 year project financed by Central Baltic INTERREG IVA Programme. In this project there are represented four countries, one region in each. They are Örebro region in Sweden, Ida-Viru region in Estonia, City of Riga in Latvia and Kotka-Hamina region in Finland. Cursor Oy from Finland, a regional development company, Örebro Regional Development Council from Sweden, Ida-Viru Enterprise Centre from Estonia and the City of Riga from Latvia are the partners of this project. A low level of entrepreneurship characterizes the partner regions. General change in the attitude towards the entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs is needed. Also lack of knowledge seems to be one important factor for low entrepreneurship. The need for this cross-border project rised when people from the four regions learned that there are the same interest towards enterprising in each region.

The main target groups of the project are the teachers, headmasters and student councellors. Other target groups are the students, municipality leaders, politicians, parents and companies.

The main activities are enterprising education training, networking electronically/personally (incl. study trips, exchange), systematic implementation, i.e. action plans/curriculums, start up packages for each participating school and dissemination by four international seminars, common website and other marketing materials.

Enterprising is a dynamic and social process where individuals identify opportunities and make something out of them in order to transform ideas into practical and aim oriented activities within social, cultural or economical framework. This includes a more specific concept of training on how to create business (entrepreneurship) and a broader concept of education for enterprising attitudes to skills which involves developing certain personal qualities such as creativity, responsibility, curiosity etc.