How to develop in young people an entrepreneurial mindset for a sustainable society ?

The first thing is to assess the extent to which people have the desire to engage in sustainable entrepreneurship and to understand where this intention comes from.

To do this, we rely on the theory of planned behavior (or TCP) based on the work of Ajzen.

There are 2 main results :

1. When a person declares an intention to engage in sustainable entrepreneurship they usually end up doing so sooner or later.
2. Having this intention depends mainly on one’s opinion or attitude towards 4 things:

• • 1) Empathy towards vulnerable people or the environment. Does she feel emotionally affected by injustice, discrimination, or damage to the environment caused by human activities?
  • 2) The moral obligation to do something about these problems. To what extent does the person feel obliged to act when confronted with them?
  • 3) Self-efficacy to do something about these problems.  The feeling that if she tries to do something, she is likely to succeed.
  • 4) Perceived social support from those around him (family, friends and network) to launch his project.

So, if a person

• • 1) shows great empathy for a societal cause,
  • 2) feels a duty to do something for this cause,
  • 3) feels able to do something about it,
  • 4) perceives that it will be able to find in its entourage the support and relays necessary to carry out its action,

Then she’s likely to be interested in sustainable entrepreneurship and want to get started, even without knowing the term itself.

Following our experiences, interviews and tests with young people, we prefer the term “desire to act” rather than moral obligation. Indeed, our position is not to impose external obligations on the participants, but rather to present the ecological and social situation (based on scientific consensus), and, if this situation provokes empathy in the participants (point 1), to work on points 3 and 4 to give them the self-confidence to invest themselves and thus consolidate this desire to act (point 2). It is therefore necessary to work with them on these 4 components.

The idea is not necessarily for them to launch themselves immediately into a project, but rather for it to appear to them as a feasible and interesting professional option for them in the medium/long term.

This is precisely what we try to do with BE YOU: we mobilize different games and playful workshops, each of them aiming at making the participants evolve on some of these components.

More precisely, we have developed and adapted 3 types of complementary workshops that you will discover below.

They can be conducted independently or together according to your needs, as all 3 focus on at least 2 of the components mentioned above.

So, GAME ON, GET READY, GO !

You will find all the materials needed to understand and facilitate the workshop by clicking on “Become a Facilitator” (Facilitation Guide, etc.)

You will find all the necessary elements for the workshop by clicking on “Printable materials” (Game board, cards, etc.)

We can offer these workshops free of charge thanks to European funding. In return, if you want to do BE YOU workshops, it is mandatory to have your participants fill in the questionnaire below and to fill in the workshop counter. All explanations here.

This approach allows us to continue our research and measure the impact of BE YOU. 

• Before using the BEYOU tools, make sure that their license is compatible with your project. BEYOU tools are either licensed under the Creative Commons “CC-BY-NC-SA” : “Attribution – Non-commercial use – Share under the same conditions”, or under the “CC BY-NC-ND” / “Attribution – Non-commercial use – No modification” license.
• The first one “CC-BY-NC-SA”: “Attribution – Non-commercial use – Share under the same conditions” allows you to arrange and adapt the tools for non-commercial uses, as long as you cite the authors, the original workshop (Ecological Renaissance for example) and Be You, and as long as you distribute the new creations resulting from this guide according to the same conditions. 
• The second one, “CC BY-NC-ND” / “Attribution – Non-Commercial – Non-Modification” (for the fresco and the building sites of the Ecological Renaissance for example) forbids you to modify them and authorizes you to use them for non-commercial purposes, as long as you mention the authors and the original workshop.