Digital Entrepreneurship for Adult Learners: Internet Web Solutions joined the online Kick-Off Meeting of DEAL

On November 9th 2020, Internet Web Solutions joined the online Kick-Off Meeting of DEAL, a Project co-funded by the Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Commission, which brings together seven organisations from five European countries (Belgium, Iceland, Ireland, Italy and Spain). The KOM, originally planned in Brussels, Belgium, was held in online mode due to COVID-19 restrictions.

DEAL stems from a few trends: according to official reports of the EU Commission, more than 40% of Europeans lack basic digital skills and almost half of them are unemployed and at risk of severe socio-economic marginalisation. In addition, an ageing society is leading to digital and economic divide: low skilled Adult are the ones who are most exposed to risks of socio-economic exclusion due to lack of digital competences.

Nevertheless, as some real case scenario have shown, for Adult People the modern digital era can also represent an entrepreneurial opportunity and not only a threat: the DEAL project aims to trigger and unlock these potential providing strong, reliable, evidence-based and practical digital entrepreneurship and business management knowledge/tools to empower self-employability and entrepreneurship for low-skilled adults.

The DEAL Project tackles various EU priorities:

the promotion and valorisation of active aging
the digitalisation of the European population (with specific regard to low skilled adults)
enhancing and boosting the entrepreneurial spirits across the EU

During the meeting, the consortium discussed about the overall project implementation schedule, defining timelines and respective duties in the following months. In particular, the partnership will upload the OER platform by the end of 2020: the DEAL official website will represent a repository of project’s outputs, results, news and contacts. A mapping activity will follow in order to identify the main trends, issues, best practices and policy support systems in the countries represented in the Consortium.

IWS will be the IT partner involved in the project, responsible for the developing of DEAL OER platform, that will be available 24-7 for all the duration of the project and beyond. The platform will host all the deliverables and the intellectual outputs produced in the 4 official languages. Moreover, IWS will follow and implement each steps of the project that will empower older rural female workers with digital skills.