PLAN, MANAGE, AND GROW YOUR SOLOPRENEUR BUSINESS AND CLIENTS WITH EASE!

In Söderhamn, Sweden at Staffangymnasiet on the 8 December, five, 19-year-old students have tried out the MyVA developments together with two VET trainers. Following a brief introduction of the project and its objectives, the MyVA materials have been presented. The students were interested and curious and took the tasks with enthusiasm. Some of them rather focused on the structure of the website, whilst others were more engaged with its content. Positive feedback has been received, even though it has been highlighted that there is considerable amount of information. Nevertheless, participants also think that the platform content would be useful in case they decide to open up solopreneur businesses.

The piloting sessions in the Czech Republic were implemented in a combined way. The sessions have been started jointly on the 23 November where participants and trainers got to know each other and the MINI MBA course was presented. Together with the course, the MyVA resources and other tools, the online platform was also presented to the audience. After assigning certain tasks to the participants, on the basis of which they could reflect on their own form of podcasting as a VA, individual meetings have been scheduled with all 5 participants between the tutor and the trainee. Everybody was satisfied with the outcomes of the sessions, they find the materials user-friendly and easy to use, even though a considerable number of documents had to be consulted. Positive feedback was received.

In the United Kingdom, five 5 young people (Millennials) and two VET teacher/trainers with a keen interest in on-line enterprises such as a Virtual Enterprise, took part in several piloting activities. In addition to completing the MyVA Mini MBA learning programme, they also evaluated and used 5 – 6 MyVA template tools. The learner’s feedback was positive and complimentary – they did comment that the quantity of resources and tools was a little ‘overwhelming’. With this feedback in mind, Exponential Training is already considering how it will adapt the MyVA programme to provide a longer, more supported learning experience as part of its longer-term exploitation plans. 

In Denmark, even though the recruiting process proved to be quite challenging, a successful piloting session has been put in place after all. There were six participants involved who got to live through the MyVA experience.  Deep talk and counselling on participants’ own business idea, combined with the tools to keep notes and to give structure to the process were the most important steps of the process. As participants were coming from different level business/entrepreneurial background an online video-based course explaining the materials and where to find them was developed locally. This has been thought of being a good introduction also to later users of the website, underpinning the exploitation possibility of the developed results.

In Ireland, direct invitations have been sent to 19 people to whom the project and its outcomes were presented alongside the promotion of participating in the piloting sessions. The session began with a discussion on the understanding of solopreneurs. Discussions about the various businesses which can be done by solopreneurs were conducted, focusing on the needs which may occur in these situations. Questions and quires were answered and discussed. Participants managed to navigate the website with ease. Positive feedback about the MyVA developments has been received also in Ireland.

Five VET learners have tested the MyVA platform and its content in Romania. The sessions began with a f2f meeting where all the developments were presented in detail and discussions were generated on the topics. Participants were grateful for the opportunity, mainly because the notion of solopreneur it was new to most of them. It begun with brief individual f2f trainings with participants. Within this meeting the solopreneur/solopreneurship concept and its benefits were discussed, as well as an overview of the various sections of the website and the platform has been made. The presentation videos were also shared for supporting participants in their further sessions while navigating their way around the platform to discover the tools and info in more depth which were previously introduced to them. Having these real-life examples handy facilitated our participants understanding on how entrepreneurship really works. It has been pointed out, that the materials give the backbone of a complete solopreneur business management.

As a general conclusion it can be said that throughout the piloting sessions all participants have benefited of online sessions, which can be seen as one-to-one mentoring, where each participant received additional guidance related to his/her question which arose during the process. Positive feedback about the MyVA developments have been received throughout the partner countries. Nevertheless, the importance of having a starting session f2f or online, which aims to explain the concrete use of the materials can facilitated a higher level of understanding of the MyVA concept.

What is coming next?

Partners will be organising even larger dissemination events to various stakeholders who could support and could have a positive influence on digital assistance.  

Stay with us and contact our local partners for finding out the dates!

Follows us to stay up to date with our developments!

Visit our website, Facebook page or contact our partners locally.