Background

With the Green Deal, the European Union has set itself the ambition of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and making its economy sustainable. Clearly, as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is about companies putting sustainable development into practice, green skills are integrated into the CSR approach. Indeed, a company that practices CSR seeks to have a positive impact on society and to respect the environment while being economically viable. It is therefore important to combine the economic project of companies with training in ecological issues. Moreover, strategies and tools that are already available can be easily adopted by companies.

However, still too few freelance entrepreneurs make the conscious choice to consider the development of their activity by taking into account ecological and sustainable issues. Some are aware of this, but do not know what methodology to use, how to equip themselves and what room for manoeuvre they have. However, whatever the individual entrepreneurial activity, it is possible to systematically adopt a development strategy that takes into account CSR and sustainable development.

The SURE project partners have identified a real lack of CSR-focused vocational training resources for individual entrepreneurs. Trainers need to develop their green and CSR skills to train and support individual entrepreneurs.

Project objectives

• To raise awareness in the business creation support ecosystem and among policy makers of the challenges of integrating sustainable development objectives into the development of individual businesses;
• To train CSR educators to enable entrepreneurs to integrate sustainable and responsible practices in order to develop their businesses;
• To design transversal tools to evaluate and develop sustainable and responsible practices among learners in vocational education and training;
• To develop multimodal training content on the theme of ecological transition that is accessible to all. A transversal objective of the project will be to develop digital skills for trainers.

Target groups

• Primary target group: educators, trainers, practitioners in vocational training of individual entrepreneurs;
• Secondary target groups: VET networks in the field of entrepreneurship and business creation, associations of training and CSR experts, policy makers in the field of VET and employment.

To achieve the objectives of the project, the partners will achieve three results for the above-mentioned audiences:

• An educational tool for assessing sustainable practices in individual entrepreneurship;
• A training toolkit on sustainable development;
• Recommendations through a white paper on CSR in individual entrepreneurship on the theme of green skills.

The project acronym (SURE) was chosen from the project name: SUstainable and Responsible Entrepreneurship.

Partners

The SURE project brings together 5 partners from 4 European countries:

• Coopérative Co-actions (France, coordinator)
• Agence LUCIE (France)
• Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Vratsa (Bulgaria)
• Aris Formazione e Ricerca (Italy)
• POUR LA SOLIDARITÉ - PLS (Belgium)

SURE at a glance

• Kick-off meeting, Bordeaux, 13-14 January 2022
• Responsible and sustainable practices assessment tool for freelance entrepreneurs (in FR, EN, IT and BG), January 2022 - January 2024
• Training toolkit on CSR and green skills for freelance entrepreneurs (in FR, EN, IT and BG), October 2022 - February 2024
• White Paper on responsible and sustainable practices in individual entrepreneurship, with recommendations (in FR, EN, IT and BG), January 2022 - March 2024
• Training of trainers activity, Italy (Terni), 4 to 7 July 2023
• Public event / National seminar, Bulgaria, 18-19 March 2024
• Public event / National seminar, Italy, 20 March 2024
• Public event / National seminar, France, 28 March 2024
• Final conference, Brussels, 10 April 2024, Rue Coenraets 72 (salle KOP, rez-de-chaussée), 1060 Bruxelles