Evan Diggin, 3rd-6th class pupil from Drumnacurra National School, Causeway, Co. Kerry, who were winners of the 2022 Junior Entrepreneur Programme Top Teams award.
THE Junior Entrepreneur Programme, which was founded in Kerry, has reached a milestone of 100,000 children starting classroom businesses since the programme was launched in 2010.
Thousands of Irish entrepreneurs have mentored the 5th and 6th class primary school pupils while they create, invest in and launch mini businesses in their schools throughout the island of Ireland over the past 13 years since the programme was founded.
The businesses created by the participating pupils have achieved sales of almost €3 million, with a significant proportion of the profits being donated to local charities.
Continued below…
.
“One of the key changes in the approaches of the classroom entrepreneurs has been the realisation that their entrepreneurial endeavours can make a difference in their locality. As a result, they’ve embraced the concept of social entrepreneurship, funded by their successful classroom businesses,” explained Programme co-founder Marie Lynch.
Initially launched in Kerry, JEP went national in 2013 and has opened the minds of children in every county to Ireland about entrepreneurship in their community.
“The feedback from many pupils is that starting a business is much tougher than they had imagined. Many children cite the biggest challenges as learning to compromise, listening to everyone’s ideas and working as a team,” according to Marie Lynch.
“Through JEP, children experience first-hand just how much fun creating, working and succeeding in business can be”, she said. “The children appreciate every cent when their investment in the business is on the line – and they savour the profit they achieve. Over 10.000 pupils in 400 classes are currently working on their classroom businesses as part of the 2023 programme,” she added.
Successful Irish entrepreneurs have been closely associated with JEP since its inception, including Tweak.com founder Jerry Kennelly, one of the programme’s founders.
Frank Salmon, CMS Distribution Chupi Sweetman of Chupi Jewellery and Sonya Lennon, co-founder of Lennon Courtney, are among the other entrepreneurs who have spent time mentoring pupils in the classroom or online workshops.
For more on the JEP, go to the website https://www.juniorentrepreneur.ie/
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
