Entrepreneurship is cool: Promising futures for young people

What is the best way to tap into the vast pool of creativity and invention that young people represent?

How about creating a whole new kind of curriculum, one that combines the basics of entrepreneurship with practical, hands-on experience and the use of technology to start and grow a business?

Unemployment in Europe is most acute for the age group that represents the future. In the 27 countries of the European Union, 18 percent of young people below the age of 25 couldn’t find a job last year.

HP and its local partners are helping young, unemployed people and graduates, aged 16-25, acquire business and IT skills. The aim is to give younger people a much better chance to enter professional life, or to launch their own businesses.

The programme – 'Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT' (GET-IT) – provides IT equipment for organisations that help young people and professional guidance courses for their trainers.

GET-IT’s interactive courses deal with practical IT solutions for daily business challenges faced in areas such as finance, management, operations, communication, marketing and technology management.

In the coming months, GET-IT will be integrated into the existing training initiatives of up to 35 non-profit organisations throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) that are already active in education and job creation.

Each organisation will receive the IT equipment needed for the training and Technology Tools (T-Tools) learning material, as well as professional guidance courses for trainers.

The T-Tools course is a key element of GET-IT. It fills the gap between business and standard IT courses. The modules explore how different IT solutions can address common business challenges in the areas of Management and Operations, Finances, Communication, and Marketing.
 
Students are also in a better position to evaluate their own skills and to identify their own needs for further training and development.

In its first phase, the programme will train at least 6,000 young people in 35 centres across 18 countries, making them better placed to get skilled jobs or create and run their own business.

There are plans to expand GET-IT into other countries.
 
"HP believes that young people can play a greater role in micro-enterprise development, which is one of the best ways to create jobs," said Gabi Zedlmayer, vice president of Corporate Marketing and Global Citizenship, HP Europe, Middle East and Africa. "This training will offer them a taste of professional life, making the transition from education to business much easier."

What is as cool as an iPod in Estonia but made out of recycled orange-juice cartoons? The VOLLI juice-wallet (http://www.volli.ee/ ).

Which East European business achieved a 950 percent return on investment in less than a year? Try the CPPN student café in Poland.

VOLLI and CPPN were the winners and received an honourable mention for the first HP Responsible Business Award in 2006. It recognises student companies that are best at balancing financial performance, social responsibility and environmental impact. HP created the award in partnership with Junior Achievement – Young Enterprise (JA-YE, http://www.ja-ye.org/ ), Europe’s largest non-governmental organisation in the field of enterprise education for young people.

HP and JA-YE have been working together since 1996 and are well-matched for a strategic partnership in Europe. JA-YE operations align with 92 percent of HP’s European locations in 25 countries. HP provides leadership on the board of JA-YE in many countries, as well as on a European level. JA-YE entrepreneurship education programmes are run for students of all ages, from five to 22.

In 2006, JA-YE Europe put 2.2 million young people, across 40 countries, through entrepreneurship programmes, with the help of more than 79,000 teachers and 64,000 business volunteers.

An HP-sponsored European Youth Survey, presented to the European Parliament at the end of 2005, engaged 10,000 secondary school students across Europe in a discussion on the importance of entrepreneurship and enterprise.

Only 35 percent of the students surveyed felt that their culture was conducive to entrepreneurship, but almost 60 percent said that if they failed at starting a business the first time, they would go for it again. Many of the young people expressed the need for a direct link with business people, whether inside or outside the classroom, to learn about how business works.

More than three-quarters of students said entrepreneurship is “cool” and that they would consider self-employment. The main reason they gave: when you are self-employed, you are in control of your career.