On the 1st of December 2019, DUBLIN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, partner of the RETAIL: “Retailers Partnership Promoting Education for the Transition of the Industry Toward Enduring Business Models” project, organised and hosted in, Dublin, Ireland, the first transnational project meeting. The partnership discused and decided about the implementation of the project´s main management rules, and general review of the partnership communication strategy and the project objectives and outputs. Partners also launched of the first activities of intellectual outputs 1 and 2.
In particular the first day was dedicated to the presentation of partners activities in relation with the new initiative: existing examples of strategic management in the industry in partners countries, especially good practices from involved business sector representatives’ members and the partnership paid a case study company site visit to a successful retailer to benchmark for best practice.
More about the project:
RETAIL project will engage a consortium made of 7 partners from 4 EU countries: Ireland, Spain, Poland and Greece. Having different background, contexts, profiles and experiences, those partners, 2 chambers of commerce, 3 SMEs offering business support services and training, 1 university, 1 IT
expert will collaborate to develop an innovative learning proposal addressed to 3 main target groups:
-Experiences entrepreneurs from the retail sector, in the need of changing their business model and practices
-Youth and unemployed, for which retail is an entrance door to the labour market, in search of opportunities in the sector and having a strong sense of new customers values and behaviours, seeking for connection and sense.
-VET stakeholders and other business support organisations and educational institutions, who will access to the OER and will be multipliers of the methodology and contents to be developed.
Within each of the target groups, the project will rely on a participative approach engaging directly with the beneficiaries in the project. At each stage, participants, particularly retail entrepreneurs and youth and unemployed will be involved to test and comment on the training products. 16 of them will participate in an on-site blended training activity in Larissa, during which the intergenerational approach will be applied.
The main project activities and outputs are dependent on peer learning and intergenerational exchange. Addressing the needs of each one of the targets, partners will develop:
-An entrepreneurs training package, providing entrepreneurs with knowledge on new business models and integration of change
-A youth training package, providing them with sectoral knowledge and how to sustain a business
-An intergenerational training package, offering a framework for collaboration between the 2 groups
-An online platform with social modules and collaborative space where users can access the OER and exchange experiences.
-8 multiplier events (2 per country) to inform about the project development and foster its exploitation A learning activity in Larissa where participants will create binomas of entrepreneurs and youth to learn thanks to work based learning, searching for solutions to retail entrepreneurs barriers and
challenges.
As a result, partners have the ambition to propose an innovative educational resource and tested methodology, which shall impact positively the target groups by:
-Bettering entrepreneurial skills of the targets
-Bettering small trades competitiveness
-Ensuring sustainability of businesses
-Ease the entrance of new labour workforce generation
-Support the generational transition in retail human resources
