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Investing in education to meet the challenges of digital transformation: new collaboration between Ergon Capital Fund and JA Europe

JA Europe and Ergon Capital Fund are pleased to announce a new collaboration to support the digital transformation of Europe’s leading provider of entrepreneurship education programmes – Junior Achievement. In today’s context digital education is more critical than ever before, and the partnership aims to further develop the digital delivery of the JA Start-Up Programme.

Our collaboration will consist of mapping and scoping the needs and requirements of a digital platform in 20 European countries, as well as creating and testing it for further scaling across Europe. The geographical scope of the project includes the following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain and the UK.

This will positively impact the competence development of JA students by offering young entrepreneurs enhanced learning and networking opportunities in a digital environment. At a community-level, we expect higher entrepreneurial activity including better start-up as well as survival rate with enhanced digital performance. In the longer term, the combination of entrepreneurship education and digital transformation will add value to the economy by contributing to innovation and job creation on a European scale.

About JA Start-Up Programme

"JA Start Up" is a Junior Achievement Europe educational programme promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, and is available at over 500 higher education institutions across Europe, with 17,000 students participating every year. Supporting European goals of improving youth employability and the start-up ecosystem, the programme fosters key competences to ensure that young people are prepared for success after university.

Moving from ideas to action, students gain crucial insights into self-employment, business creation, risk-taking and coping with adversity with the support of specially trained teachers and mentorship of business volunteers. The long-term success can be seen through the countless alumni who continue to grow their innovations and ideas after the programme’s completion, turning them into sustainable businesses.

About JA Europe

JA Europe is the largest non-profit in Europe dedicated to preparing young people for employment and entrepreneurship. JA Europe is a member of JA Worldwide® which for 100 years has delivered hands on, experiential learning in entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy. JA creates pathways for employability, job creation and financial success. Last school year, the JA network in Europe reached almost 4 million young people across 40 countries with the support of nearly 100,000 business volunteers and over 140,000 teachers/educators.

About Ergon Capital Fund

Ergon Capital Fund is Ergon Capital’s own foundation. Launched in 2020, under the umbrella of the King Baudouin Foundation, it aims at financially supporting projects related to youth and education throughout Europe. Ergon Capital is a pan-European mid-market investment company which provides “patient and friendly capital” to entrepreneurs and managers who need capital, industrial or technological solutions to accelerate the development of their companies.

For further information: minna@jaeurope.org