From cohorts to a lasting community

An institution-first community model

After the first training cycles the consortium pivoted from an individual-first to an institution-first model. Curated classroom delivery, where an educator facilitates and enriches the gamified experience, consistently outperformed open individual recruitment in both engagement and completion. Institutions provide the structure — educator, schedule, assignments, projects — that game-based learning needs.

The community is therefore built across three lines, each with its own tools and entry route.

• Community of partners and affiliated organisations: VET centres, high schools, colleges, universities, training providers and tourism businesses, engaged through the Partnership Program.
• Community of educators: trainers supported through the Train-the-Trainers manual and a dedicated Cohort 3, so they can integrate CoastalPro into their own curricula.
• Community of learners: four cohort profiles — skilling, up-skilling, re-skilling and inspiring — supported by an incentives programme, internships and apprenticeships.

How the cohorts evolve into a community

Each cohort targets a different profile and leaves behind a group that stays connected: students and graduates (Cohorts 1 and 2), educators (Cohort 3) and aspiring entrepreneurs (Cohort 4). Learners are kept active through prizes offered by project partners and affiliates — from a full-board stay with water sports at Surf Club Keros to one-to-one recruiter sessions, Blue Economy Masterclass places and internships in the Canary Islands.

On-the-job training (D5.2) and Train-the-Trainers (D5.3) complete the chain, giving industry stakeholders a guide for internships and apprenticeships and educators the tools to run their own playful learning experiences.

The Cohort 4 tourism entrepreneurship programme

Cohort 4, Inspiring Entrepreneurs, ran from April to July 2026 as an open, self-paced acceleration programme. The single deliverable was a ten-slide venture pitch mapped onto the six modules, evaluated by a consortium panel against five weighted criteria. Entry was free and open to students, graduates and young professionals, individually or in teams of up to three.

The strongest pitches entered the mentoring track: business coaching, help turning a pitch into a public campaign, and introductions to investors, hoteliers and industry stakeholders.

Campaigns run on the CoastalPro Venture Portal — a platform that reproduces the full discipline of a crowdfunding campaign (pledge tiers, supporters, progress, leaderboard) as a transparent simulation. No money changes hands; every pledge is a verified, non-binding expression of interest that generates genuine market signal while teaching the fundamentals of fundraising.