Chris Curtis, Francisco Banha and Miguel Gonçalves
In the beginning of the new school year, in which many students and teachers have great expectations, Gesentrepreneur takes on, again, the responsibility of transmitting an entrepreneurial attitude in the Portuguese schools showing, via rebranding, the will to reinforce its presence near, mainly, the Portuguese School Community.
Remembering that Gesentrepreneur was set up in June 2006, with the aim to take on, in a sustained manner, initiatives entrepreneurship friendly which allowed the development of entrepreneurial skills of our young students, so they can have key skills that prepare them to a life in a society increasingly distributed and cooperative.
In fact, introducing new teaching methods and learning models, dynamizing the entrepreneurial culture, was only possible to happen due to the strategic partnership and alliance with the company CG International, leaded by the Canadian Professor Chris Curtis, one of the world references in the Entrepreneurship Education Area, with over 30 years of experience.
It was precisely the mentioned teaching methodologies, of CG International, that together with our team of education professionals, the main factor of differentiation in the market of entrepreneurial education, made the practical implementation of an extensive activity curricula tested in the international markets such as USA and Canada.
In these 7 years of activity, we developed entrepreneurship projects in several regions and with different scopes. We trained over 2500 teachers (training certified for CV) and over 50000 students (from 6 to 18 years old) in Portugal which, for the first time, had contact with the entrepreneurship world. From a pilot project in Madeira Island we grew geographically to 60 municipalities in mainland Portugal and today our methodology is used in schools from our Islands.
All this time, Gesentrepreneur had also the chance to work in other countries, not only Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola, Cape Verde and Timor, but also in Latin America countries such as Mexico, Uruguay, Equator and Bolivia. These experiences allowed us to take the first steps to be international and to have our methodology recognized and valued also by other cultures.
With the trust that, year after year, has been given to us by the several education agents (schools, teachers, students, training centres, parents, municipalities, etc.) in the same manner as the recent entrance in international markets, we felt it was time to change our institutional image.
Based in the fact that that our target public are young people, as the main users of our services, it was needed to adopt a corporate image which represented some of the values we stand for on our daily work, like dynamics and innovation. Learning-by-doing has always been our motto!
Gesentrepreneur is born amongst a business Group linked to Management (Grupo Gesbanha), but, without losing that connection, is, today, a strong education brand, reason for which we’ll soon launch a new brand (complementary to Gesentrepreneur) and new products/services will be in the market developed by the same multidisciplinary team, that we take pride on, of management, education, pedagogy and psychology.
We are aware that many people are apprehensive about the future of our young people especially about their integration in the labour world, but we believe that the quality of our education can be the difference between success and failure. So, in Gesentrepreneur we continue looking to this tough reality as an unprecedented opportunity to reach all youth in school age through our Entrepreneurship programs.
We also want to continue to be a trusted partner of the several educational agents in designing innovative education projects (in entrepreneurship and other areas) that for one hand, help establishing new education paradigms and on the other can make the difference and are relevant for the uncertainties world (but also filled with challenging opportunities) that awaits for our young people.
Thus, we believe that the new corporate image, which we are now sharing, will still be synonym of stability, trust, wisdom, honesty, tranquility and creativity for all the people that contact Gesentrepreneur to access programs that impact the lives of our young people around the world and for many years.
