Partners

Junior Achievement Macedonia (JAM) was founded in October 2017 as one of 123 Members of Junior Achievement Worldwide, which encourages and helps young people for future jobs. Through trainings, financial education, work readiness and entrepreneurship, creates employment pathways and creates new jobs. JAM organizes innovation camps, hackathons/ competitions, teacher trainings, networking events, workshops for youth, round tables, peer-to-peer student exchange programs. The core activity of our work is the JA Company Program that provides economic education for high school students aged 15-19 by allowing them to organize and operate an actual business. Students not only learn how businesses function, they also learn about the structure of one enterprise system and the benefits it provides JAM works on improving partnerships between businesses and schools, to create a generation of young people who are capable of applying innovative approaches and techniques in their curricular activities and are better prepared for the modern workplace. A total of 92 high schools in North Macedonia, out of 131, have been involved in JAM activities so far, from which 317 teachers have been trained and certified and more than 3.500 students have been engaged in innovative project activities.

JACzech is implementing a comprehensive concept of business education in Czech schools since its founding. They shape the entrepreneurial thinking and financial literacy of young people, connect them with people from practice and help to start their successful professional careers. In cooperation with schools, they create a favorable and motivating environment for the development of personal skills within the entrepreneurial education of students and teachers. With 13 employees, they have an annual operating budget of $425,000. They cooperate with 27 High schools (35% penetration), 401 Primary schools (10% penetration), 1000+ teachers cooperant, and 60,000+ reach of students annually.

JAP aims at preparing young people to succeed in the market economy and helping them to gain knowledge and practical skills. For 30 years JAP fulfilled its mission by realizing several entrepreneurship and financial education programs directed to primary and secondary education school students. JAP is proud of its 8,599,713 students taking part in the programs. Currently, they implement 11 programs, where teachers joining their programs receive free access to materials, training and year-round support from a project coordinator. They offer partnerships with the business community to support the education of young people. They conduct mentoring activities, conduct lectures and workshops for students, and become jury members at competitions.

JAS is a senior partner in the international network of JA and there is a lot of know-how transfer potential to other project partners. The number of JAS Alumni is over 430K+ in past 30 years, some of which are already successful entrepreneurial role models (www.jaslovensko.sk/uspesni-absolventi/ ). Their knowledge in mobilizing the Alumni to further promote the entrepreneurship is crucial for this project consortia. To add, they have matching activities with students aged 14-19 as well as teacher training, Innovation Camps, Conferences, Webinars, Seminars, Workshops, short-term programs, educational projects, competitions, trade fairs, etc. JAS has a wide network of supporting stakeholders, which could be used in the dissemination activities but also in transferring the experience to the other project partners (www.jaslovensko.sk/partneri/).

JA Hungary as our network partner has ongoing activities of international character. JA Hungary connects partners in education, domestic and international business through an entrepreneurial experience where young people aged 6-24 years are inspired to start their entrepreneurial idea with the support of corporate partners, mentors, and teachers. JA Hungary’s entrepreneurial community provides space and support for young people’s development in a wide range of areas, including the challenge of teamwork, responsible decision-making in changing circumstances, the opportunity to take risks and self-fulfillment. JAH focuses on extra-curricular activities and competence development in educational institutions and this is where we see the future of intensive cooperation. JAH organizes various activities throughout the year with a goal to help students and teachers effectively cooperate.

EKOS Skopje, despite being a young organization, was founded by experienced university professors and entrepreneurs to stimulate a sustainable entrepreneurial environment. EKOS, as a project partner, will contribute with their expertise in business case study writing and teaching. Their staff is certified for Harvard Business School Case Based teaching. In addition, they have co-authored a few business case studies of internationally successful Macedonian entrepreneurs. They are experienced in using the case study method as the preferred teaching method in their university and secondary school lecturing. They performed team teaching for high school teachers and university professors more than 8 times(300 teachers), and have conducted over 40 pieces of training for students, youth and the unemployed on the topic related to entrepreneurship, women in business and business models.