Last April I had the rewarding chance of participating in the “Be Enterprising” training course in Samobor (Croatia) which main goal was to teach how to foster the enterpreneurial mindset in youth and in youth work. 

The topic itself was personally important to me, since in my line of work fostering entrepreneuership and that mindset in my students is an important mission- unfortunately with just formal learning the teaching doesn’t have the desired effect.

I was hoping to gain a lot of new insights on what kind of tools can I use in my work later on. But as it tends to be with Shokkin training courses, I ended up gaining much more than that. 

The training was for me personally more like a personal development and learning journey. I started to see that creativity has a lot more dimensions than just one and that there are so many ways of triggering it. I also learned what kind of tools in that field work on me and which don’t.

Through a business simulation game we played, I realised that sometimes by not overthinking and overworking but doing things with as much joy and least effort as possible, the end product can actually somehow be more productive and functional AND you get to enjoy the process part more.

I realized that with some activities you can know all the theory, but the true learning moment comes after trying it out and reflecting on your mistakes and learning from it. Through trying out different self-analysing tools on values and possible career options, I realised how sometimes just a simple visualisation of your own thoughts can have a bigger impact on your perspective than just thinking about it. 

I also got inspired by different success (and failure) stories of different enterpreneuers from all around Europe. As an added bonus, I met some new inspiring people with whom I have the opportunities to collaborate in the future both in the educational field and youth work field. 

All of the skills, tools and knowledge I gained, even my own personal development, actually contributes a lot to my everyday work. Already I have used some of the self-analyse tools practiced with my students at school and have a plan of also playing some of the enterpreneurial games we used in the training with them.

I hope to give them at least a tiny bit of the same excitement I experienced during the training, and the realisation that every person is creative and capable of creating something of their own. The truth is, that only a person with an enterpreneurial mindset of their own can foster the same in others- so my own personal growth from the training is the start for me to be able to multiply it in others. 

Anna-Liisu Arukask

The training course gave me a a good amount of experience about my personal learning process. Since I was somewhat familiar with the topic and ways to do entrepreneurships, I had the enjoyment of being well-aware of all the aspects talked during the project. Yet, I had never put my emphasis on the methods and supporting factors that the trainers used in that project.

I liked that they gave a lot of attention on personal well-being and personal growth and stories of an entrepreneur. My biggest takeaway was Ikigai, which shows a person their true sweet spot of passion and reason. Its one of the great ways that a person can really analyze themselves.

I feel that the course didn’t go as deep as maybe one professional would: the purpose was not so much to give us a deeper knowledge to get started with entrepreneurship, but rather give us the tools to find our way ourselves and the tools to help others, specially youth, to find their way.

In that sense, the project had just the right amount of team building exercises, group work, methodology lists and discussions. It opened a door for us but we needed to choose ourselves, what to do with all the information.

Compared to other training courses I’ve been to (6-8), this one definitely had the most professional setup and the richest list of good practices, methods and tools to use for teaching. I understand that it was also the main point – to gives as many tools to youth workers as possible, to tackle the subject of entrepreneurship.

I immediately go back to my local community and to my school to start implementing the methods and some games I learned from the project. I mostly enjoyed the simulations and the board games (PitchPerfect) that will definitely get the attention of youth.

Julius Liiv

When I decided to join the course, it still wasn’t quite clear for me what was going to happen there. But (as you will see below) it turned out to be absolutely worth it. I knew that the course was aimed at teachers and other youth-workers, and since teaching is something I recently got involved into, I figured that I’d more or less fit in.

The location was great – in the hills near the town called Samobor in Croatia. The participants were great people, a lot of youth workers and entrepreneurs who worked in their own NGOs, so it was really interesting to get to know what other folks do, and to grow your network if you are looking for partner NGOs.

The content was actually really interesting. Hosted by no other than members of Shokkin Estonia, it was really impressive to see them in action. The course was really well structured, first focusing on team bonding and theory, and then on a more practical part.

The group tasks and activities facilitated knowledge exchange between participants of different countries. A couple of educational games that we played were amazing, and working to both improve our own soft and creative skills, as well as revealing themselves as great tools that can be used to educate the young.

My personal highlight was the business simulation game “Shokkinopoly”, where within a specific setting and with limited resources, the teams had to come up with their own business, that they would have to run on that same day for 2 hours, with target group being other participants. Such a great game for triggering one’s creative thinking as well as problem solving, finding what is it that your team can provide others and implementing that in a tight deadline!

In the end, my big takeaways were a deeper understanding of what does it mean to be an entrepreneur, clarity on what it takes to become one and understanding of why it is important to educate the young on this.

Obviously, it is not for everyone – I personally would rather live in a world where there are more doctors, than entrepreneurs. But at the very least, one can broaden their horizon and enrich their worldview by understanding what is it that entrepreneurs do, and why it is important.

Stas Gil

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“Be Enterprising” was a KA1 Training course funded in the frame of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission through the Croatian National Agency.