The phase of creation and evaluation of success stories about prosperous entrepreneurs under project ACE - „Developing Adult Educators‘ Competences to Promote Learners‘ Lifestyle Entrepreneurship“ (No. 2015-LT01-KA2014-013404, financed by Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 2 “Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices”, Action “Strategic partnerships for adult education”) was completed effectively.
The six partner organizations created 37 real stories about entrepreneurs who turned their hobby into a successful business. 12 of the stories were in a video format and 25 of them were in a written format. The main categories by which the stories were divided were the following:
- Art
- Health and beauty
- Food
- Handicrafts
- Interior
- Agriculture
- Selling
- Entertainment
- Others
In each one of the stories the successful lifestyle entrepreneurs have given information about
- What their previous work experience is
- For how long they have been running their own business
- How and why they have started running their own business, which are the factors that helped them and what challenges they had on the way of developing their business
- A description of their business idea
- What their marketing strategy for advertisement is
- Why they chose this kind of business
- In what way is their business related to their hobbies and lifestyle
- What technical and financial capacity they had when they started their own business
- What motivated them to start their own business
- What is the role of their family in their business
- How they expand their business
- How they evaluate their progress
- If they need extra knowledge to expand their business
- If they learn new things in order to improve the quality of their business
- If they run their business alone or if someone helps them
- What their plans for the future are
- Which is the most important thing that they have learned from having their own business
- How they will motivate other people to start their own business and become lifestyle entrepreneurs
The 6 partners in the project are Kaunas Region Educational Centre (Lithuania), Social Innovation Fund (Lithuania), The Women's Organization (United Kingdom), Danmar Computers LLC (Poland), Centre for Advancement of Research and Development in an Educational Technology (Cyprus) and Know and Can Association (Bulgaria).