❺ Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award

Transcription

1 ❺ Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award GLOBAL FINALISTS Haris Murati, Montenegro Vrata Mladih Nikhiya Shamsher, India knicnacs.com Theodora Mihaela Cleja, Romania Minimalist Drawing Competition Victoria Yetunde Akinfolarin, Nigeria Bizkidz Board game Zhu Hui Yi, China 21-day s challenge to record money

2 Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award Haris Murati Program Name: Vrata Mladih Country: Montenegro Age: 18 Partners: Haris Murati, Ensar Dedeic, Dino Colovic, Amar Bralic, Denis Fetahovic, Zijad Kurpejovic, University Donja Gorica, local government and local business centers Mr. Murati initiated the Vrata Mladih program in 2012, introducing primary and secondary school children to entrepreneurship. The program uses workshops, covering topics such as business plans, finance, innovation and forming virtual enterprises. The main goal is to equip students with the necessary knowledge to help them shape their future and overcome economic challenges. Through this project, they raise awareness amongst students about social entrepreneurship. Moreover, the program includes an event named Global Week of Entrepreneurship, where students compete to create the best business idea, company logo, business plan and presentation. After the competition, an entrepreneurial fair is organized locally with the money raised being donated to charity. Within the program, students engage in various group activities like brainstorming, analytic techniques and mind mapping. Divided into groups, they start creating enterprises by completing business plans. Students form contacts, define their products, set retail prices, analyze the market through polls, recognize competition, and determine budgets for the next 12 months of business. After those steps, students design the company s logo and the business presentation. All the students can participate in the project, as well as students with special needs and those coming from rural and low-income areas. The project plans to expand its outreach and cooperation with other young local entrepreneurs in the near future. Vrata Mladih has reached 700 children and youth between the age of 13 and 18. Dozens of students from this project won various prizes both at the national and international levels. On the 10th May, 2013, students participated in the Entrepreneurship Fair in Berane, achieving outstanding results. The company Green and Clean won third place in the category The best business plan and the company Lumiere won first place. About 80 students from the team s school successfully completed the school of entrepreneurship and innovation for young people at the University of Donja Gorica. In 2013 the underground containers by Semra Šutković was purchased by the company Goranovi. The Vrata Mladih program is a pioneering achievement for Montenegro. It seems to have achieved good results for what concerns the promotion and facilitation of development of various worthwhile businesses. In addition, the workshops engage a broad number of partners and are held in collaboration with a wide range of agencies.

3 Nikhiya Shamsher Startup Name: knicnacs.com Country: India Age: 15 Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award Partners: Kaveri Medappa, Sunita, 8-10 vendors, digital marketing company, Aramax, Ccavenue, Payu, Amazon Project knicnacs.com is the culmination of two other projects of Nikhiya Shamsher. The first one, Bags, Books and Blessings, was initiated in 2015 to get schools to donate reusable school supplies every year. The second project was Yearn to Learn and used crowd funding and other donations to launch science laboratories in three schools. Nikhiya wanted to open more laboratories, but resource constraints prevented this from happening. This led to her current project: knicnacs.com, an e-commerce website where she sells quirky, off-beat items. Examples can be a dragonfly which balances on the tip of the finger or coffee-mugs with tuck-in biscuit slots. She intends to use 100 per cent of the profits from knicnacs.com to open more laboratories over the coming two years. Knicnacs.com shows young people that they can earn their own money with the help of modern technology, all while studying in school. Nikhiya was hearing many stories about bright young students dropping out of college because they did not have a strong foundation of education. Therefore, Nikhiya wants to provide them quality education in Science and Math so that they can find jobs in technological fields and can become innovators and inventors. She wishes to start a Yearn to Learn Mathematics and Science club in which the exceptionally bright students from various schools can be given specialized coaching so that they can appear in various international competitions, such as the Google Science Fair and the Intel Engineering and Science Fair. Through this project, Nikhiya has demonstrated the potential of technology for young entrepreneurs and that making money and dealing with financial instruments is not just for adults. The project has reached 25,000 students. At 15, Nikhiya is a proud tax-paying citizen and the money she earns will be used in starting science and math labs in schools and colleges for less privileged youngsters. Within just one month of the launch, she has earned nearly 105 thousand rupees. She has sold over 200+ products to 180 unique customers, with an average sale of Rs 525 ($8 USD) per customer. Nikhiya s story and achievements are impressive. The products she has developed are fun and innovative, and her business makes use of new means such as e-commerce for a social cause. In addition, she was able to work with several bigger enterprises, thus enlarging her business network and showing great entrepreneurial skills. Finally, she has been able to successfully secure the opening of three science laboratories at a very young age, thereby showing a strong personal and continuous commitment. Furthermore, she is very much committed to invest 100 per cent of the profits of the next two years to the opening of other laboratories.

4 Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award Theodora Mihaela Cleja Program Name: Minimalist Drawing Competition Country: Romania Age: 18 Partners: Mois Georgiana Julia and Transylvania College teachers: Raluca Hodrea and Mihai Zoican. International Schools in Bucharest, Erasmus International Schools Minimalist Drawing is a competition in which primary and high school students are challenged to graphically represent financial concepts studied during their Economics, Business, and Entrepreneurial Education classes in a minimalistic style. This means that the viewer has the possibility to guess the concept and interpret the work of art. The project is in its second edition. Students are invited to submit their drawings, paintings, and other original art pieces filled with ideas describing global financial concepts. A jury of specialists in finance and art then chooses the top three pieces which are selected and exhibited in Transylvania College during the Global Money Week. The drawing with the most votes at the end of the week receives the popularity prize. The winners are announced during the Global Money Week Awards Ceremony. The objective of the competition is to achieve a better understanding of the financial world and become more familiar with financial concepts starting from an early age. The competition is aimed at both Romania and International students from Transylvania College, International schools in Bucharest, and partner Erasmus International schools. The project has reached 1,700 students. The competition is the first financial drawing competition that is addressed to such a large range of students in Romania. After last year s edition, more students have expressed their interest in taking part in the competition. It is the only project of its kind developed by young people for such a wide array of students. Moreover, the ones involved gain a profound understanding of the financial concepts they have studied as part of their preparation for the competition.

5 Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award Victoria Yetunde Akinfolarin Startup Name: Bizkidz Board game Country: Nigeria Age: 15 Partners: A Master Trainer in Entrepreneurship, students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship of Nigeria, many primary and secondary schools, Universal Basic Education Board Bizkidz is a board game that teaches young children in primary school and early secondary school about money. It emphasizes savings, how to start a small-scale business and other financial inclusion elements. This product was produced for the first time in 2013 and has been growing in popularity in primary schools and some secondary schools in Kaduna and Abuja. It is the outcome of collaboration among youth in secondary schools with a passion for teaching financial education in a way that the kids will learn and have fun at the same time. Bizkidz Board game is an infotainment project: i.e. a combination of information and entertainment. It is a first of its kind, since it combines virtually all the elements of financial literacy (savings, starting a small-scale business, money management, financial inclusion, business tactics) in a simple and fun manner. The objective is to encourage youth to save, become financially educated and start smallscale businesses no matter how small. Many youth have been positively impacted by their projects. They now understand that they can save their money and grow their businesses. The project has reached 20,000 children and youth. Moreover, Victoria and her friends have won several regional and national awards through this project and other projects, among them the CYFI Best Entrepreneurship project in They also won the most innovative youth financial inclusion project at the 2015 CYFI Awards They have won the best Entrepreneurship project five times in SAGE competitions. The board game is a very innovative and a well-crafted idea, appropriately addressing its target audience as well as the local needs. The overall outreach has been impressive and Victoria shows real dedication to the cause.

6 Outstanding Youth Economic Citizenship Award Zhu Hui Yi Program Name: 21 Day challenge to record money Country: China Age: 20 Partners: BeBetter Guangzhou youth development center, public welfare financial education projects The project is a 21-day-long accounting challenge. During the 3 weeks, youth have to take care of their personal payments and recurring expenses while making a thorough accounting analysis. The challenge has been initiated because some surveys showed that only 18% of college students in China save with a long term time horizon in mind. Furthermore, they are not aware of how they spend their money and they do not plan their financial futures. Therefore, the program was launched in order to improve students financial awareness, by teaching them bookkeeping, how to optimize consumption and how to save effectively. The project provides students with a platform of accounting information channels to help them become independent and well equipped with financial knowledge. With this 21 Day Challenge, the project does not give students the solution to their financial problems, but gives students the way to solve these problems on their own. The project uses a lot of group activities such as brainstorming and mind mapping. The project also includes the promotion of a national accounting contest, in order to give many young students the possibility to develop accounting skills and rational consumption habits. The 21 Day Challenge is carried out in 10 schools of Guangdong and reaches up to students. In the community, an e-commerce student from Jiangmen Xinhui JiDian Vocational Technical School in Guangdong won the first prize and won the award of 6000 Yuan ($875 USD). The competition in Guangdong has raised the interest of well-known websites (such as NetEase, ifeng. com, South Network) and other media channels (Shenzhen daily, Shenzhen Evening News). The project finds an interesting and compelling way to bring personal finance to life for students in China. They collaborate effectively with public and civil society initiatives and have made good use of local media channels to promote the project.