MLH pupils to attend entrepreneurship conference in Germany

WINDHOEK, 17 APR – Three learners from the Martin Luther High (MLH) School in the Okombahe village in Erongo Region won a trip to Berlin, Germany through the ‘Start-Up Project’ competition organised by the Goethe-Institute.

The learners – Vickson Goraseb, Alida Kutuahupira and Bradley Jod – scooped the prize for their ‘Road Monitoring Drones’ business idea, which is meant to assist law enforcement agencies monitor accident prone roads, with the aim of reducing their prevalence.

The team will join 12 other teams from Africa that will participate in an entrepreneurship conference in Berlin in August 2018.
“They will have the opportunity to understand the environment for entrepreneurs there, share ideas and skills with each other and already established start-ups from Germany,” said Goethe-Institute Secretary, Irmi Röder.

Röder told Nampa here Monday the Start-Up Project is a competition for high school learners to develop business start-up ideas and plans.
The Goethe-Institute, Germany’s worldwide cultural institute, ran the competition with four schools in Namibia that teach German as a foreign language.
The project under the Partner der Zukunft (Partners for the Future) initiative empowers learners at MLH, Windhoek High School, Otjiwarongo High School and Swakopmund Private School to be entrepreneurs, noted Röder.

“Those four schools participated and we asked learners in teams of three to enter their business ideas, so all these three students had to come together and develop a business idea,” said Röder.
She further noted they received 31 entries and only selected the best six teams to attend two workshops.
The first workshop took place in March in Otjiwarongo.
“The learners learned to refine their business idea and develop a business plan and then they got invited to another workshop that took place this past weekend, when they got to finalise some finance and marketing issues and then also learned how to pitch to sponsors, or in this case a panel of judges,” explained Röder.
A panel of four judges assessed the participants based on criteria such as innovation, market assessment, resources and organisation, finance viability and pitch performance.

NAMPA