Start Cup Academy closes in Pescara — and hands its results to Ukrainian city leaders and Abruzzo’s next founders on the same day

The Erasmus+ partnership held its final project meeting at the Aurum in Pescara on 21 September 2026, combining the formal closure of the project with two live dissemination moments: the opening day of the UEAM Academy for Ukrainian mayors, and a Start Camp session of the Start Cup Abruzzo 2026 competition.

PESCARA, ITALY — The eight partner organisations of Start Cup Academy met at the Aurum – La Fabbrica delle Idee on Monday 21 September 2026 for the project’s Final Project Partner Meeting, bringing to a close a 30-month Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership that set out to help university students reach the start-up competitions — the Start Cups — that can turn an idea into a company. Delegations from Latvia, Bulgaria, Italy, Belgium, Croatia, Spain and Ukraine were hosted by the Italian partner IDP in the Pomilio Room.

A full day of closure

The morning session reviewed every work package in turn. Coordinator RISEBA University of Applied Sciences (Latvia) presented the overall project status and the roadmap to closure; Internet Web Solutions (Spain) reported on the Start Cup Academy Digital Warehouse and the pilot delivery that tested the curriculum with more than 180 students and prospective founders; and IHF (Belgium) confirmed the finalisation of the three Work Package 5 results — the Mainstreaming Strategy, the Manifesto and the Mobility framework. Sessions on communication and visibility, quality assurance led by IDP, and the allocation of final responsibilities completed the formal agenda.

Two live dissemination moments in a single day

What distinguished the Pescara meeting was that the project’s results were put in front of two very different audiences on the day the partnership closed.

UEAM Academy — Ukrainian mayors and senior officials

At midday, Mr. Dmytro Treskin of the University of Customs and Finance (Ukraine) presented Start Cup Academy and his experience as a Ukrainian partner in an EU-funded project to a cohort of Ukrainian mayors and senior public officials attending the inaugural session of the UEAM Academy — the first of ten planned editions — running in the same venue and coordinated by IDP. Senior Italian government figures were also involved in the initiative during the week, making the encounter a rare cross-sector opportunity to connect entrepreneurial education with public administration and reconstruction priorities.

Start Camp — Start Cup Abruzzo 2026

In the afternoon the delegations moved to the “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti–Pescara, Pescara Campus, to attend a session of Start Camp, the training initiative running within the Start Cup Abruzzo 2026 competition. Partners presented the project’s results and methodology directly to local contestants — precisely the audience the Start Cup Academy curriculum was designed for — closing the project with the same activity it was built to support.

The results are now public

All Start Cup Academy outputs are published as Open Educational Resources under a Creative Commons licence and may be downloaded, used, reused, adapted and shared without seeking permission, provided the source is acknowledged. They include an analysis of entrepreneurship education in seven countries, eight micro-credential training modules available in seven languages through the open-access Digital Warehouse, and the three Work Package 5 results presented in Pescara. The full catalogue is at www.startcupacademy.eu.

About Start Cup Academy

Start Cup Academy is an Erasmus+ KA220-HED Cooperation Partnership (2023-1-LV01-KA220-HED-000160254), running from April 2024 to September 2026 and coordinated by RISEBA University of Applied Sciences (LV) with Burgas Free University (BG), Associazione Innovalley and IDP (IT), IHF (BE), the University of Dubrovnik (HR), Internet Web Solutions (ES) and the University of Customs and Finance (UA). The project equips universities, incubators and training providers with the tools to prepare students and prospective founders for participation in start-up competitions.