More than 14 million family enterprises in Europe provide for 50% of GDP and 60 million jobs. In times of crisis, family enterprises play a crucial socio-economic role as an employment buffer and pivot of growth. Despite such important socio-economic role, at present there are very few initiatives tailored to the specific needs of family enterprises whose competitiveness is undermined by various challenges, especially for family enterprises of micro and small sizes:

• challenges relating to governance and management models
• upskill of competences in areas like management and business administration
• digitalization processes and competences for family enterprises to embrace digital entrepreneurship
• internationalization and globalization

VESTA's objective is to support the growth and competitiveness of family enterprises so that they can strive and continue to play that crucial role of social buffer and economic engine of growth, by developing innovative operational tools and training resources. The VESTA Project will develop:

• the VESTA Open Educational Platform and its use in multilingual versions
• operational tools in support of family enterprises
• innovative training specifically tailored and targeted to family enterprises

We come from the VET system (both formal and nonformal) and we support system and facilitation of entrepreneurship, family enterprises and Third Sector.

The six steps of the project are:

• mapping of the family businesses characteristics and their problems at European level
• development of tools and training courses to support the family businesses managers
• test of the products
• their validation
• their distribution through full OER (Open Educational Resources) Platform
• mainstream outputs from VESTA