Bulgarian Students Win First HP Responsible Business Ideas Contest

HP Europe, the Middle East & Africa (EMEA) and Junior Achievement-Young Enterprise (JA-YE) Europe today announced the winners of the HP Responsible Business Idea Contest which awards social and environmental responsible business ideas from students across Europe.

The Bulgarian team “Crystal Stream” took the top place with their idea to market an affordable water-filtration system. “This programme showed us that entrepreneurship can combine creativity and responsibility and have a positive impact on our communities,” said Victoria Zotova, a member of the Bulgarian team.

“Learning to be entrepreneurs of the future should go hand in hand with a growing awareness of CSR values,” said Gabi Zedlmayer, vice president of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA. “The business strategies in this online contest showed not only a good idea for turning a profit, but a desire to achieve something tangible for the community.”

Student teams from the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia and Slovakia also participated in the HP Responsible Business Idea Contest.

Each winning student team in the Responsible Business Ideas Contest received an HP Digital Camera and the top 3 winners will be invited to the JA-YE European Company of the Year Competition in Berlin on 26-29 July 2007 (www.juniorprojekt2007.de). The winning ideas will also be published on the website www.responsible-business.org.The contest is part of the yearly HP Responsible Business Competition, an initiative designed to encourage young entrepreneurs across Europe to develop social and environmental awareness and responsible business leadership skills. The highlight of the competition, the HP Responsible Business Award, will be presented in Berlin on 29 July to the JA-YE student company with the most comprehensive approach to social and environmental responsibility.

JA-YE Europe (www.ja-ye.org ) is Europe’s largest provider of enterprise education programmes, reaching 2.2 million students in 40 countries in 2006. Funded by businesses, institutions, foundations and individuals, JA-YE brings the public and private sectors together to provide young people in primary and secondary schools and early university with high-quality education programmes to teach them about enterprise, entrepreneurship, business and economics in a practical way. The JA-YE Company Programme is recognised by the European Commission Enterprise Directorate General as a ‘Best Practice in Entrepreneurship Education’.