News

Student joint-venture from Spain and Norway leads the way with innovative product

‘Wirbasing Europe JV’, a student-company partnership between Wirbasing (Spain) and RAW Media UB (Norway), won the Global Joint-Venture Award based on their innovative wireless solar chargers for mobile devices.

The students impressed the judges with their strong marketing plan and materials, as well as their production, business model and financial capabilities.

The Enterprise without Borders® (EwB), an educational programme developed by Junior Achievement (JA) for students aged 15-18, gives them the opportunity to create international partnerships as part of their JA experience. In the 2014-2015 school year over 4,100 students in 34 countries participated in EwB with 680 student-companies. Of this there were a total of 3,116 registered joint-ventures supported by over 200 business volunteers.

Joan Taló, a teacher from Bell-Lloc School in Girona, Spain, worked with the Spanish team throughout the year-long programme. He shared that, “Working on the same project and making decisions together are very important skills both today and in the future. My students will have to work this way in their real life. Internationalisation is a very important challenge for all companies, and they have already had this experience this year. So, they are quite prepared for their future.”

As part of the programme, both student companies organised student exchanges to increase collaboration, even participating in the 2015 International Student Company Fair in Riga, Latvia earlier this year.

Since its start seven years ago, the programme has brought together more than 54,000 students representing over 4,600 student companies and 7,000 joint-venture partnerships across 41 countries. Aimed at increasing business communication, EwB fosters a variety of additional competences, including: ICT (information, communication, and technology), English, teambuilding, collaboration, cultural understanding, different legalisations, bridging gaps between co-workers and customer outreach in diverse markets.

“Cross-border partnerships are essential to opening new markets and building stronger businesses. Through Enterprise without Borders®, students have the opportunity to not only grow their overall entrepreneurial competences, but also to learn the essentials of successful international collaboration.”– Caroline Jenner, CEO for JA Europe

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About Enterprise without Borders®

Enterprise without Borders (www.jaewb.org) is a secondary school and/or college programme that teaches the value and importance of international trade and the practical skills necessary to do business across borders. Each Enterprise without Borders site forms a business entity and negotiates a partnership agreement with one or more other sites in other countries, student companies registered under individual sites create joint-ventures with other students companies abroad. A website is available to help the “matching“ between student companies interested in a joint venture or an import-export business. Students from different countries will register and post their offer to participate in the programme and supply information for a “marketplace” where products are on display and research on trading can occur. The programme encourages entrepreneurial partnerships between schools and teachers

About JA Europe

JA Europe (www.jaeurope.org) is Europe’s largest provider of education programmes for entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy, reaching 3.2 million students in 39 countries in 2014. It was founded in 2001 when Young Enterprise Europe and Junior Achievement International Europe merged. JA works with the education and business communities as well as governments to provide young people from primary school to university with experiences that build the skills and competences they will need to succeed in a global economy. JA’s activities have been endorsed as best practice by the European Commission. JA Europe is the European Regional Operating Centre for JA Worldwide®.

For more information, please contact:

Marie Hargitt
JA Europe Communications
+32 2 893 44 36
marie@jaeurope.org