Helping students become more employable through entrepreneurship

Jaye Malta Foundation hosts fifth Social Innovation Challenge with Microsoft Malta

Limited funding and schools’ already very tightly packed curriculum are the two biggest challenges that the Junior Achievement Young Enterprise Malta Foundation is facing when promoting its youth-oriented entrepreneurship programmes in schools according to Julian Azzopardi, CEO of Jaye Malta.

“Notwithstanding our attractive entrepreneurship programmes, Jaye Malta is still struggling a lot to make inroads into formal education and access to schools remains our biggest issue especially due to lack of funds required to train the moderators and to procure materials and coordinate all activities to promote entrepreneurship in schools. This is why we are always looking forward to our collaboration with Microsoft Malta when it comes to hosting our annual Social Innovation Challenge,” Azzopardi explains.

This year, 50 15/16-year-old students from various state, church and private schools formed six teams to compete in the 2017 edition of the Social Innovation Challenge hosted recently at the Microsoft Innovation Centre. The theme of this year’s edition, the fifth one organised by Jaye Malta in collaboration with Microsoft Malta was Creating a solution to motivate more youth to participate in entrepreneurship activities.

“Every year, all participating students are presented with a challenge. This year, students had to interpret the meaning of ‘entrepreneurship’ and design a product, a service or an event for youths of their same age that would encourage them to take up entrepreneurship in or outside their schools. We believe that when we increase student participation in such activities we would be helping them improve their employability skills so important for their future career path,” Azzopardi added.

Angela Micallef from Microsoft Malta explained how, in line with key national agenda initiatives supporting government and education, Microsoft Malta is constantly working closely with youth NGO Jaye Malta Foundation to urge more youths to innovate through the support of technology and address societal needs.

“The students, who were mentored by the Microsoft Malta team, were given access to Microsoft tools as well as attended a Developer masterclass with which to build their ‘solution’ and their final presentation and business website. During this event, they learned the basics in creative thinking and problem solving and were encouraged to break away from the constraints of what may be considered as obvious solutions while confronting them with their interpersonal, as well as problem solving skills to learn to work under tight deadlines.”

“Through such events Microsoft Malta not only reaches out to youths through collaboration with NGOs but also provides students with new learning opportunities outside the classroom in line with Microsoft’s YouthSpark initiative by using Computer Science and Microsoft technology to give life to their innovative ideas,” concluded Micallef.

“We always look forward to collaborating with Microsoft for this event as we believe Microsoft, with its technology, inspires youth to achieve more. This is in line with Jaye Malta’s philosophy where we also encourage students to achieve more through our programmes and this is what makes our partnership for this event with Microsoft an ideal one,” Azzopardi concluded.