This year's Young Enterprise HSBC National Trade Fair will have an international flavour. For the first time, a team from Norway will be exposing itself alongside 14 local teams, made up of first-year post-secondary students.
Young In Follo, which produces newspapers for schools from the Follo area in Norway, generating their revenue from advertising, will add to the students' learning experience. During the fair, which will be taking place in the square next to City Gate on March 2-3, they will be able to learn about foreign learning systems, especially those of a far away place such as a Scandinavian country.
A second team from Norway is also expected to attend. The team will be chosen today during the competition finals.
The YE Trade Fair, which is in its 19th year, is synonymous with budding young entrepreneurs. The 16- or 17-year-olds present to the public the product or service they would have marketed throughout the year, which is part of the Company Programme, an initiative which helps students create their own enterprise and experience the highs and lows of a year in business.
Karl Gouder, YE chief executive officer, is thrilled about the "global village" characteristic the annual fair is taking on.
"Students can share their learning experience with their foreign counterparts; they can discuss the problems they encountered, and the solutions they came up with. They will be able to draw conclusions as to whether the business principles really differ from one country to the other.
"The fair will also benefit our teachers and those accompanying the Norwegian team. They can discuss, share and learn from their particular teaching methods and experiences."
The fair, which is supported by HSBC through sponsorships and the commitment of Josef Camilleri, head of public affairs and corporate social responsibility, as chairman of Young Enterprise's board of directors, is also a unique public relations exercise. Students face "real" customers for the first time, although Mr Gouder does not exclude that some of the customers may actually be the judges themselves.
"To enhance the students' experience, especially from an international perspective, four of the 14 Young Enterprise teams will attend the European Trade Fair in Bucharest next month. In an event where our students join more than 100 teams from 42 countries to display their products, the benefits are unparallel," Mr Gouder said. Throughout the year, the students put the YE motto "learning by doing" into practice by developing a product or service and a business plan. Along the way, they are supported by a designated group of high-profile professionals, including CEOs of national and multi-national companies, who in turn judge the students through a four-stage process.
Mr Gouder explained how the fair marks the beginning of the judging process, at the end of which one team is proclaimed Company of the Year. The winning team is invited to represent Malta in the European Company of the Year finals.
In a few weeks' time, the teams will be expected to submit their annual reports to describe the development of their small business, and to describe how far they have followed the business plan with which they had started off, or whether they took a different path altogether.
In the third stage, the judges interview the students, who are given the opportunity to analyse what they have learnt and extract life-long lessons. The climax is a five-minute presentation in front of a 500 or 600-strong audience - definitively a strong challenge for students who are still learning to be self-confident. The teams are also judged for their marketing and financial strategies, the best product, business plan and stand at the fair, the most effective use of IT, and the most innovative team. Together with the chairman's award, the teams compete for another eight awards, each judged by a separate panel.
For more information, email kgouder@youngenterprise.org.mt.