“Young entrepreneurs are the future of the republic”: a charity fair for schoolchildren was held in Kazan
A charity fair of the republican project "School Business Start" was held in Kazan. Young entrepreneurs from all over Tatarstan presented their products - handmade jewelry and Christmas decorations, sweets, original interior items, educational games. The students will use half of the proceeds for the treatment of their peer Anisa Garipova, a ward of the Good Kazan Foundation.
“Participants of the fair are manufacturers. Students sell what they have made with their own hands. These guys are actually ready-made entrepreneurs, the backbone of our country and republic,” said First Deputy Minister of Economy of the Republic of Tatarstan, Director of the Department for Entrepreneurship and Competition Development Airat Shamsiev at the opening of the school fair.
According to him, there are more than 200,000 self-employed people in the republic. In the future, school fair participants will be able to join them or choose another suitable business format.
“What I saw here today is no different from the products that self-employed republics sell. You just need to understand what sells better, what you should pay attention to, what marketing strategy to follow so that your products are in demand,” the Deputy Minister of Economy advised young businessmen.
Half of the participants in the School Business Start project are students from rural schools. After graduation, the guys will be able to open their own business in their small homeland, create jobs, developing the economic potential of the region.
“According to the forecast of analysts, by 2050 70% of the population will become urban dwellers. But we can try to slow down this process in the republic by investing in the future of young entrepreneurs,” Airat Shamsiev emphasized.
Tatyana Ivanova, head of the department of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Tatarstan, in her speech noted that the "School Business Start" is a large-scale project implemented in Tatarstan. More than 12,000 students from 62 secondary schools have become its participants this year.
“This project has already entered the history of the republic. We are grateful to the President of Tatarstan for supporting this initiative,” Ivanova said.
As part of the republican program "School Business Start", students in grades 5-7 were trained in the format of a business game. The guys made a portrait of an entrepreneur, passed special testing, developed their own projects, business plans and PR campaigns. The students who showed the best results received in-depth training in theoretical and practical business skills. They learned how to work in a team and tried themselves as entrepreneurs. At the fair, schoolchildren presented the results of their work.
“I am glad that young entrepreneurs are not following the path of “buy cheaper and sell more”, but the path of production or the provision of services. This is the main thing that we wanted to put in their heads, and this is a strategically correct decision that the republic expected from us,” said Elena Tikhonova, head of the KidSpace children's city.
She added that the work on teaching children entrepreneurial skills has been carried out in the republic for a long time. However, "School Business Start" is a debut project of such a scale and level. The school fair is the final event of the program in 2022, but the work does not end there. In February 2023, the project participants will have a business case championship. The final gathering of school business companies is scheduled for April 2023. It will be attended by 20 teams, which will compete with 120 students. All of them will get a unique experience, and the two best teams will go to Skolkovo.
The organizers of the School Business Start project are the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Tatarstan. The program is implemented within the framework of the national project "Small and Medium Enterprises and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives". In the new year, the "School Business Start" project will cover even more schools from the regions of the republic. In addition, according to Airat Shamsiev, it will serve as a positive example for other regions of the country.