Blog | Travel Edventures

What is an Erasmus+ Exploitation Plan?

Written by Sara Beltrami | May 20, 2023

Erasmus+ is an EU programme that helps students and learners to travel abroad, to experience work, study or training in a different country. Your time abroad on Erasmus+ can be anything from 2 to 30 days, or from 2 weeks to one year.  This depends on the type of project you choose. Erasmus+ is open to many people including pupils in school.  

Erasmus+ for Trainees 

Erasmus+ helps trainees gain valuable experience in the workplace by supporting traineeships abroad. Erasmus+’ support for traineeships is available for higher education students and recent graduates, as well as  for vocational education and training students, apprentices and recent graduates. 

For projects relevant for youths, the main targets are young people from 13 to 30 years old, youth workers, staff and members of organisations active in the youth field. For projects relevant to the field of sport, the main targets are professionals and volunteers in the field of sport, athletes and coaches. 

Erasmus + Programme Guide defines exploitation as: “Exploitation means to use and benefit from something.” For Erasmus+ this means maximising the potential of funded activities, so that the results are used beyond the lifetime of the project.  

Exploitation consists of “mainstreaming” and “multiplication,” meanings below: 

  • Mainstreaming is the planned process of transferring the successful results of project initiatives to appropriate stakeholders and decision-makers at local, regional, national or European levels. 
  • Multiplication is the planned process of convincing individual end-users and immediate stakeholders to adopt and/or apply the results of the Erasmus+ project. 

Exploitation activities have the key objective of maximising the impact of project results by optimising their value, strengthening their impact, transferring them to different contexts, integrating them in a sustainable way and using them actively in systems and practices at local, regional, national and European levels.  

For Erasmus+ projects, exploitation means helping target group to share in its success, experiences and lessons learned during the duration of the project. For the purpose of multiplication and mainstreaming, an exploitation strategy is outlined. After a deep analysis of the project transferability, a strategy is drafted and will be constantly discussed among partners to adjust exploitation activities to progress the project. 

The exploitation plan defines the activities to be carried out to enhance the successful exploitation of the project results in terms of industrial development/creation of the products or processes and where it will be placed on the market. 

 

Read also our interesting blogs:

What is an Erasmus+ Dissemination Plan?

Erasmus+: Your Evaluation Kick-Off Meeting