Student Business Lead Programs are Turning Some Heads

In the 2014-2015 school-year, more than 275,000 students participated in the Junior Achievement Europe Company Program. Participants learn to run a company from top to bottom, including creating the company and marketing their real products and services. The success of the program is largely due to the wide support from business volunteers, who act as mentors, offering expert advice to the students.

Each year, Junior Achievement (JA) runs a Company of the Year Competition (CoYC) in Europe. Now in CoYC’s 26th year, over 200 JA Company Program students gathered in Berlin, Germany between 28-31 July, to celebrate the top mini-companies from across Europe. 37 student-teams from 36 countries competed as part of JA Europe’s flagship Company Program, which gives them an opportunity to set up and run a real business with the support of business mentors. This year, a student-company called Orange from Malta won the ‘Excellence in IT Award’ from AT&T at CoYC.

Orange impressed the judges with their IT innovation-driven concept, which demonstrated strong business potential and sustainability, as well as viability and scalability. The mini-company developed SelFeed, a freely downloadable mobile app whereby users are eligible for a discount on their bill at affiliated restaurants after sharing a photo (or selfie) of their purchase on social media.

Through the help of AT&T’s career mentoring program, a program that focuses on advancing secondary school students in Europe through direct work experience and job shadowing where possible, JA Europe and AT&T are working to empower the next generation of IT-driven innovators, by building key competences in entrepreneurship and business.

Congratulations to Orange on their innovative app and their ‘Excellence in IT Award’! We look forward to seeing what these students and all of the JA participants create in the future!

For more about JA in Europe please visit their website.