A new scholar year is beginning, and we are ready to continue collaborating with Seed Project. But what is this project, you might be asking? Here’s the answer: this is a project promoted by Câmara Municipal de Lisboa that aims to bring entrepreneurship and innovation subjects to high school students of the Municipality to open their minds to creativity and innovation, introduce them to the tools to create new businesses, promote finance literacy and instill an entrepreneurial mindset from a young age.
Based on a design thinking methodology, this 9-month pilot project was cocreated as a joint effort to answer teachers and students needs and expectations that involved the contribution of 8 strategic partners in which Tec Labs is included, as well as Casa do Impacto, Fintech House Lisboa, Lispolis, ISEG, ISCTE, FabLab/BioLab Lisboa and Future of Work.
In our case, we were involved in 2 different activities:
- The first one was the participation of high school students in Innovation and Entrepreneurship open classes that we usually organize every school year within the scope of our optional courses on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Ciências ULisboa. The lectures were led by Ana Prata and we welcomed a total of 5 visits from different Schools that had the opportunity to learn more about innovation, IP, business models, clients, and value proposition. All lectures were followed by an inspirational talk with entrepreneurs of our ecosystem and a visit to our incubator.
- The second one consisted of an ‘Entrepreneurial Mindset” workshop (4 in total) conducted by Rita Tomé Rocha in four different schools involved in the project.
- In total, we’ve collaborated with 5 different Schools from the Municipality, welcomed 84 students to Tec Labs, and reached almost 250 students with our workshop.
The main results of the project are the following: 3 out of 8 students believe they developed initiative and autonomy skills, became more innovative and organized, and half believed they got more creative, while 40% is more comfortable with teamwork. Student satisfaction with the activities promoted within the scope of the Seed Project was also great: 79% believed that it exceeded their initial expectations and 65% believed that the content was useful for the future.
As for the teachers, around 80% highlight critical thought and teamwork as the most important skills developed by the students and 60% find that the students are now more creative, organized, innovative, and more likely to feel comfortable solving problems. Finally, roughly 90% of them also believe that this project was useful for the student’s future.
Overall, we had a very positive balance of our participation in the project. The schools and students were very cooperative with the projected activities, and we feel that its impact was great for both. The future starts now, so keep an eye on what we will continue to do this year!
