An Еcopreneur focuses on environmentally friendly topics and causes, aiming to do business in a way that benefits the environment.
Ecopreneurship is a rising trend in business and an important response to our global environmental challenges.
“Ecopreneurship is characterized by some fundamental aspects of entrepreneurial activities that are oriented less towards management systems or technical procedures and focused more on the personal initiative and skills of the entrepreneurial person or team to realise market success with environmental innovations.”
Ecopreneurs therefore often embed personal mission, beliefs and drivers in their business activities e.g., to reduce food loss and food waste, packaging use, improve animal welfare or reduce the ecological footprint of food production.
Manning L, Smith R, Conley G, Halsey L. Ecopreneurial Education and Support:
Developing the Innovators of Today and Tomorrow. Sustainability. 2020
Ecopreneurs is a European initiative that promotes sustainable entrepreneurship education through the use of gamification and thinking-based learning as facilitating and integrating approaches. The project’s vision is to cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets and behaviors with an emphasis on environmental preservation while fostering sustainability competencies, taking into account the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the EU Green deal and the core EU principles such as accessibility and inclusion.
The project team behind the ECOPRENEURS brings together solid expertise in the fields of education, entrepreneurship, research and consulting in sustainable development, game-based learning and game production.
Seven organisations from Sweden, The Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Greece and Turkey gather their efforts together to contribute to cultivating sustainable entrepreneurial mindsets and behaviours.
This project has the main objective to provide VET students with the know-how and knowledge of developing entrepreneurship in a sustainable way.
It proposes to design a new alternative VET pedagogical resources and digital tools for integration of sustainability aspects into entrepreneurial education.
The aim is to educate quality human resources that will represent successful entrepreneurs for future establishing viable businesses in different fields.