iSpark's Brand New Competition for High School Students Just Opened Up in Egypt

iSpark, the educational startup that made waves in Cairo last month with its massive Traverse conference, is launching its first entrepreneurship competition for high school students, Young Entrepreneur. The startup, launched by Mostafa Hashisha in 2015, was ranked by Injaz Egypt as one of the top 10 startups in the country in 2016, and has  adopted different career development services to help high school students get exposed to practical experiences in the market.

Now, in collaboration with USAID and the Ministry of Trade, the startup is launching Young Entrepreneur, a programme specifically designed for high school students. "We believe that every high school student should not graduate high school without having two must-haves defined; a problem that they would solve for the rest of  their lives (a bigger why), and a passion that they will pursue as a career," Hashisha says. "We saw that the best thing that would help students identify the two must-haves is learning entrepreneurship so we decided to start.” 

Kicking off in December, students will be able to enter the programme in teams of three to five, accessing a full educational programme on entrepreneurship designed in partnership with Arcadia, they will be facilitating weekly hands-on training sessions for the students. The programme will kick start with a two-day boot camp where the students will come together with their teams and start the ideation phase, followed by weekly trainings and mentorship leading up to a final event, where each team pitches their idea in front of a panel of judges. However, Arcadia and iSpark designed the competition so that students compete with targets rather than competing against other teams, given that everyone can literally win.

There is a cash prize for the final winning teams up to 20,000 EGP. Other than the winning teams, all teams will have their pictures posted on Facebook and for each like they get they will win a monetary prize. Students can register online at the FB page, they can register as individuals and will be put together with a team of three to five members.

For more information about registration and the program check out the Facebook event.