STARTUP+SKHU
INTERREG V-A SKHU/1902/4.1/003
The entrepreneurial potential of the SKHU border region is far from being explored. There are numerous start-up initiatives, mainly centred in the capital cities and university tows, concentrating mainly on university students and young professionals. Meanwhile, young people with lesser education living in the countryside are left with few possibilities to learn about innovation and entrepreneurship and/or to join the growing start-up ecosystem.
The past experiences of the organizations partnering up in the frame of the present project show that young people attending vocational schools possess a considerable innovation potential that can be revealed through adequate educational projects concentrating on practical competences.
The project’s goal is to organize a virtual international start-up competition for vocational school students (age group: 16-19 yrs.), based on a special blended learning course led by skilled mentors and an interactive digital platform that allows students to reflect on each other’s work. We engage 2 x 18 mentors from at least 2 x 6 institutions, and we involve 300 students in a blended learning course of 2 x 6 weeks, partly in local languages and partly in English.
We blend the methodology of vocational education with the spirit of the start-up ecosystem: the course is embedded in a virtual start-up competition. Learners form virtual start-ups, and they can earn capital by studying the e-learning material, as well as by persuading investors to incest funds into their start-ups. The best performing start-ups will be the winners.
The twist in the game is that investors are the students themselves: they can select the best ideas presented by other teams and invest into them very much like in a crowd-funding system. At their turn, investors also compete: those, who invested in the most successful start-ups will get higher return rates.
At the end of the game, every participant will get a reward both as a start-upper and as an investor, The rewards are proportional to the results achieved.
The project firmly relies on the results and experiences of previous projects (e.g. Entrepreneur+).