As part of the EU's Erasmus+ Program, Global Impact Grid (GIG) has partnered with AREGAI (Italy), IDOP (Croatia), GTE Karbon (Turkey), Eurospring (Serbia) and N&P Business Consulting (Germany) for the project “Enabling Sustainable Growth and Transformation of SMEs with a Focus on Work-Based Learning” (GT4SME). 

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SMEs are the backbone of the economy. According to the European Commission, they “represent 99% of all businesses in the EU”. The majority of new jobs and innovative ideas come from SMEs and they are relatively more flexible in adapting to changing global business environment. The pace of technological change, which influences economic and societal development is increasing every day and SMEs are key in determining Europe’s position in catching up with that change. Policies of the European Commission in the field of “Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs” indicate there is a great emphasis on “digital transformation”, “corporate social responsibility” “SME internationalization”, as well as “access to finance for SMEs”.

Indeed, in the framework of the GT4SME project, consortium partners will have a focus on four topics that are crucial for SME-transformation and -growth: digitalization, internationalization, financial access and positive impact. Through dissemination activities and project deliverables, project consortium aims to provide SME-educators with know-how and a framework around these topics that can be used to help SMEs and individual entrepreneurs develop their businesses in a sustainable way.

The project has officially started on 01.11.2019 and will end by 31.10.2021. During this 2-year period, consortium partners will (further) learn about above-mentioned four topics and exchange knowledge, expertise and good practices from their own regions. They will work on these topics based on real life cases to facilitate work-based learning. 

The project will result in increased knowledge and capabilities for SME-educators in particular and will have a wider impact on other stakeholders that include SMEs, entrepreneurs and innovators, entrepreneurship-ecosystem practitioners, as well as policy makers.