INT4FURN: Everything you need to know!

INT4FURN is an Erasmus+ project that lasts 24 months. The project began in December 2022 and will end in November 2024. The project was created because of recent crises such as Covid-19 and Russian attack on Ukraine, that have hitted severely the furniture sector which faces a significant drop in the number of companies, jobs, and turnover.

The Furniture sector and Micro-SMEs in the EU struggle to internationalise their business and only 25% of EU-based micro-SMEs export at all and an even smaller portion export beyond the EU. The main challenges are accessing foreign markets, finding new business partners abroad, competing with big companies… It has become very important in order to eliminate these obstacles as much as possible and to ensure the internationalisation of micro-SMEs.

The INT4FURN project aims to promote entrepreneurship among micro-SMEs and young people and thus create high-quality new employment and internationalisation opportunities. Internationalisation training course will be designed to provide young micro-entrepreneurs with the basic business skills and digital business opportunities in an international environment in order to develop their business.

Partnership

The partnership consists of 7 organisations from Turkey, Greece, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Estonia, which are the following:

• Gazi Universitesi – Turkey.
• Institute of Entrepreneurship Development – Greece.
• Internationale Arbeidsvereniging – Netherlands.
• Ankara Ticaret Odasi – Turkey.
• Intituto Ikigai – Spain.
• Intituto Politecnico de Santarém – Portugal.
• Huemaniser OÜ – Estonia.

Project objectives

The main objectives of our project are the following:

• Support participating micro-SMEs in VET and further training activities in the acquisition and the use of knowledge, skills and qualifications related to internationalisation in the furniture sector.
• Develop an ECVET compliant dedicated internationalisation course including curriculum, training content and materials that will allow target groups to learn (remotely) at their own place.
• Develop an innovative self assessment tool for measuring the readiness for entering in global markets and identifying required competences.
• Support curriculum and course with instructive engaging training videos and training materials, hosted on Digital Internationalisation Learning Hub.
• Develop innovative online and mobile ICT-based tools for supporting training courses.
• Improve the cooperation between institutions and business, in other words, between theory and practice.
• Reduce the risk of failure of the micro-SMEs in the furniture sector in entering international markets.
• Raise awareness of micro-SMEs and young people about entering new markets and trading in an international environment.

Project results

INT4FURN project will build an innovative, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary program, ensuring unity of certain knowledge with practical competences, while considering its complementarity with existing initiatives where it can contribute.

The partnership in order to accomplish the above objectives, will create the following project results:

1. Country reports and Consolidated state of art report
2. Internationalisation curriculum for VET learners, ECVET compliant
3. Training content and materials for VET learners
4. ECVET Compliant Innovative Training Course
5. Handbook for Internationalisation
6. Proficiency glossary about Internationalisation
7. (self) Assessment tool base
8. Digital Internationalisation Learning Hub including online/mobile platforms
9. Project brand, dissemination materials, dissemination channels
10. Dissemination strategy and report
11. Cooperation of partner organisation
12. Exploitation strategy
13. Quality strategy and report
14. Pilot report

Stay tuned for more information about our project!