The School Enterprise Challenge: Learning by Doing

Entrepreneurship education has become increasingly popular across the globe, with many governments advocating for its integration into school curricula. In fact, the European Commission included a "Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship" to its list of eight key competences necessary for lifelong learning. Behind this recommendation is the awareness that the world of the 21st century is one of accelerated change. Such a context demands higher levels of resilience and adaptability in every stage of one's life, and teaching entrepreneurship as part of childhood education can ensure that these competences are learned from an early age. Teaching entrepreneurship, then, is more about building up an entrepreneurial mindset from an early age than about creating new businesses. This is, in a nutshell, what Teach A Man To Fish aims to achieve through its flagship program, the School Enterprise Challenge. The organization's mission is to empower young people with the skills they need to succeed in school, work, and life through a 14-step program that guides teachers and students in setting up a real business in their school. The goal for Teach a Man To Fish is to provide student entrepreneurs the skills and experience they need to continue in education and secure a decent job or set up their own businesses when they leave school. In the long term, these young people become reliable workers and job creators, thus doing their part in reducing unemployment and poverty worldwide.