Skip to content
An official website of the OECD. Find out more
Created by the Public Governance Directorate

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV).

How to validate authenticity

Validation that this is an official OECD website can be found on the Innovative Government page of the corporate OECD website.

Young Entrepreneurship Mentors – Education to Learn and Transform

125474078_690287015249384_1759962971694861139_n

Young Entrepreneurship Mentors is an education project to disseminate the culture of innovative and impact entrepreneurship. It aims to acheive this through agile methodologies that empower students from integrated High Schools in the Federal Network of Science and Technology Education to undertake sustainable solutions for their community through science, technology, and innovation.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

The project was developed with the aim of inserting young people and adolescents into the labour market and promoting interaction with their communities as well as improving their living conditions. It is meant to help them build new perspectives for the future and establish themselves in the territory through science, technology, and sustainable innovations.

The new social relations and world of work that we in demands transformations in the educational environment. In other words, educational environments are required to contribute to the formation of individuals with the capacity to respond and generate solutions to the problems that society faces and be the main actors responsible for promoting solutions for their communities' development. A strategic way of achieving sustainable territorial development is for citizens to feel that they are an integral part of their communities and thus have a great interest in transforming them. The project's actions address the entire family of the students, since every student trained in the young entrepreneurship mentor methodology is a potential 'multiplier' within their families, supporting them to think about transformative solutions that address local problems. The students' families are involved in the process of identifying the problem, ideating the solution, and developing market research. At the end of the project, a business expo is held. In this final activity, family members are invited to participate and students present their projects to a panel of local investors and entrepreneurs. The project has been taking place since 2018 on the Registro campus in São Paulo's Vale do Ribeira, the region with the most preserved Atlantic Forest continuum in the state. Vale do Ribeira, as a region, currently has the lowest economic development index but possesses significant potential for growth, especially in attracting young talent. In 2020, the project was adapted for virtual networks and extended to students from the Federal Institute of Minas Gerais (Câmpus Ponte Nova) and the Federal Institute of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Câmpus Bom Jesus do Itabapoana). Furthermore, it obtained support from the Ministry of Education through the IF's More Entrepreneurship Program.

The young entrepreneurship mentoring project enables transformation, diversity, and inclusion by breaking down barriers and making connections between students and their community. It is divided into three phases: Inspiration, Hands-on, and Entrepreneurial Convergence. The project empowers students to develop solutions for their community through science, technology and innovation. The main objective is to spread the culture of innovative and impact entrepreneurship through innovative and inclusive methodologies in the entrepreneurial process with the help of mentoring teams formed by young teenagers from the IFSP integrated high school. The mentors support the process of disseminating the teaching of business modeling tools for the development of innovative business projects through digital platforms and face-to-face workshops for teenagers and high school students. The goal is to implement a strategy to multiply the culture of innovative entrepreneurship among peers. All planned actions are based on the vision of multiplying active entrepreneurial and innovation methodologies through peer mentoring. That is, the formation of a team of young entrepreneurship mentors who offer mentoring to other young students and teenagers in the development of entrepreneurial projects, attracting them to the business and technological world, promoting exchanges and mutual enrichment among peers.

Its objective is to inspire young people to believe that the socio-environmental challenges in their regions are opportunities to develop innovative and impactful solutions that genuinely contribute to inclusion and diversity. In addition to multiplying the learning of entrepreneurship and innovation, peer mentoring especially among teenage girls creates a sorority network based on empathy and fellowship in pursuit of achieving common goals with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. Each trained teenager is a 'multiplier' and has the real opportunity to lead new stories as an entrepreneur in their community.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

The project's innovative nature resides in the transformation of the educational environment. Educational environments are required to contribute to the formation of individuals with the ability to respond and generate solutions to the problems that society faces, being the main responsible for promoting solutions for their communities, leading development. Being able to come up with new and innovative ideas and carry them out in ingenious ways is considered important in all sectors of society, and the project contributes to the transformation of high school teenagers into future protagonist citizens.

What is the current status of your innovation?

The project was implemented, it has impacted students and allowed for the creation of innovative projects.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

Teachers from the Federal Network of Science and Technology Education supported in testing and multiplying the methodology. Additional support for the project arose from the IFSP Innovation Agency, the Brazilian Ministry of Education and the Bpticário Group and other companies in the students' awards.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

  • Students and families
  • Surrounding community
  • Teachers

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

  • Training of 1000 students in the federal network
  • Creation of 5 companies at the end of the project
  • Development of organizational innovation projects with 5 companies in the region
  • Accomplishment of 7 business meetings - entrepreneurial convergence
  • Generation of technological development scholarships for students
  • Support to more than 400 entrepreneurs of adventure tourism and artisans of Vale do Ribeira during the pandemic period
  • Productive inclusion of 70% of the students who were scholarship holders in the Young Mentors project

Challenges and Failures

Challenges

  • Institutional support at the beginning of the project
  • Engagement of other teachers
  • Student engagement in the first version of the project
  • Support in awarding prizes in the entrepreneurial convergence panels
  • Development of the methodology

Failures

  • Not having involved more people in the structuring of the project
  • Lack of having trained scholarship holders
  • Lack of systematization of the methodology in the process of project execution
  • Lack of people to take care of the dissemination of the project

Conditions for Success

I believe that the main reason for the project's success is that it gives young people a reason to believe that their ideas can transform their surroundings and contribute to complex problems. It makes them feel that they are an important part within their contexts and makes them proud to belong there.

Replication

The project can be replicated anywhere in the world. We have already multiplied the methodology in other partner institutions. For example, with the monitors of environmental tourism in the surroundings of the Atlantic Forest and with the artisans of Vale do Ribeira.

Lessons Learned

The main lesson learned is that young entrepreneurship mentoring has become a laboratory for transforming and impacting young teens. Teachers can make a difference in the lives of their students and can teach them to be proud of where they come from, to do their best where they are and with what they have, and to put these resources into work to impact their community and the world in a more positive way. This learning process builds on the acquisition of skills needed for entrepreneurship and includes the evaluation of opportunities and recognition of possibilities for future involvement.  Reflective learning processes are transformative in building useful entrepreneurial knowledge. Furthermore, among the biggest lessons was the importance of learning inside and outside the classroom.

Supporting Videos

Status:

  • Implementation - making the innovation happen
  • Evaluation - understanding whether the innovative initiative has delivered what was needed
  • Diffusing Lessons - using what was learnt to inform other projects and understanding how the innovation can be applied in other ways

Innovation provided by:

Media:

Date Published:

25 July 2023

Join our community:

It only takes a few minutes to complete the form and share your project.