We bring Peques and Más an interview with Rosa Poo, the founder and director of Initiator Kids. She is also the delegate of Aerco (Association of Community Managers) in Cantabria and specializes in the development of actions that promote entrepreneurship. This year organizes Cantabria Initiator. We leave you with the introductory interview of Initiator kids and the main objectives of the initiative that puts the focus on developing the creativity of the kids.
What is Kids Initiator?
It is a campus of educational excellence for the promotion of entrepreneurship among children. It is a project of the Initiator Foundation and among its objectives are those of generating an equal learning experience (all children can participate), perform motivational activities, develop their personal skills and education in values, motivate their ability to generate new ideas, help them to define objectives, accompany them in the identification of skills and competences that help in the achievement of achievements and finally train them to learn to undertake.
When is it celebrated and how much does it cost?
This summer we have two campuses: Canary Islands from July 23 to 29, 2012 with a cost of 200 euros and Cantabria from August 22 to 31 with a price of 650 euros. We also organize workshops in schools and outside the classroom, at the request of these or other entities.
What kind of activities do you intend to do with the children?
These are some of the workshops:
- Innovation workshop in business models. Visual tools will be used to understand what a business model is, how to design them and how are some of the businesses that are currently successful
- Four-hour activity in which, through a series of tests, children will simulate some of the most relevant aspects in the operation of a new innovative company
- They will perform the script of several plays in which they will reflect all the phases that an entrepreneur or startup goes through
- Assembly of a small avant-garde architecture house. Design, creativity, spaces, sustainability, alternative energies
- The kitchen opens the appetite and the mind. Objectives: through knowledge and reflection we will know its benefits and how to apply them. We will talk about health, product, creativity, taste. In the end the boys will make and make a menu for their classmates
- Disruptive innovation practical in traditional businesses. The activity poses a challenge for children to imagine how to apply disruptive exploitation models to those businesses that are around them
- Communicate well to undertake better. Development of verbal and nonverbal communication, elaboration of messages and concepts, preparation for public speaking
Why would children have to go to a camp as Initiator Kids?
We propose a learning model in which we join entrepreneurs for the first time with a brilliant career with children. It is a new learning model because everything is based on interacting about real models and experiences. We do all this in a natural environment, which in the case of Cantabria is in a 32,000 square meter estate, integrated in the Natural Reserve of the Marshlands of Santoña, in Rada, with sports and leisure areas: canoe, zip line, hiking , caving, mountain biking, swimming pool, etc.
What shortcomings have you identified in the Spanish educational programs and how do you intend to resolve them with Initiator Kids?
Every education system has its virtues and defects. Any modification in it carries a lot of analysis and counter-analysis, objections, changes with greater or lesser success. The truth is that the world is changing now much faster than before and teaching is taking time to adapt to a way, manner and tools more in line with the needs that social and professional life demands. We do not want to change the current models, it is not our responsibility, we want to join the most innovative teachers, entrepreneurs with a strong commitment to transfer their best experiences to children and to a society that seeks to complement the learning space of their children with a Proposal like ours.
How can children with an entrepreneurial mindset change the world?
First they can change their own world because being an entrepreneur is not necessarily, as generally perceived, a person who sets up his own business. Entrepreneurship is an attitude, and it is in the face of personal, social and professional life.
Fostering an entrepreneurial attitude makes it easier for the child, working in the future on his or her own behalf, to try to always act with his or her creative capacity, to have an emotional training that allows him to better manage any situation and with less fear of innovating .
Do you think that creativity in children has to work more in schools and at home?
It is from creativity that a child observes the world, the closest and the farthest. The game is essential because it allows you to create worlds, adapt them, modify them. You have to recover the game time and share it with them because it helps them grow, solve fears, build dreams, achieve milestones, become stronger. Satisfy your curiosity, encourage it, spark your imagination, etc. Nothing better than parents who play with their children, who encourage them to make their own decisions, allow them to make mistakes, encourage them on the road that sometimes from a very young age is glimpsed: art, science, technology.
What techniques and materials are worked in Initiator Kids to stimulate the creativity of the little ones?
We do not base our work tools on technological material, we rely on it, but the priority is the interaction between entrepreneurs and children. All our teacher-entrepreneurs have a high component of empathy towards the idea of bringing the best of themselves to children through these workshops and that the child captures it. There is a high component of personal skills and abilities that intersect in the classroom, both from the boys to the teacher and vice versa. Internet is a means to stimulate creativity, because the game allows it, the relationship with others, the search for knowledge, the thinking of others, the thousand questions and their immediate thousand answers.
Internet is not everything, but it is a very powerful medium, it is the way of relating that should not be avoided, in a controlled way at an early age, because it will be in their lives yes or yes.
Is there an Initiator also for teachers?
Of course there is. From the Initiator Foundation we have the objective of promoting and facilitating entrepreneurship. To achieve this we organize activities in different cities. Activities of entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, where they can share knowledge and experiences from you to you. Where entrepreneurs established with several companies created can help and encourage those who have, for the moment, just a business idea and are thinking of making the leap. From here we would like to invite all readers to be encouraged to attend Initiator in their city. On a monthly basis we organize an event for entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.
What do we have to do for children to maintain creativity throughout their training cycle?
Today everything happens very fast and creativity needs time. Let's try to favor spaces where it can happen, calm times, change scenarios. Give the child time to discover the things he likes best and facilitate his approach to them.
From Peques and Más we thank Rosa for her generosity explaining all the entrepreneurship initiatives that take children into account. We value them as very necessary to get the kids involved, when they grow up, in the task of creating companies in a natural way and as a complement to their academic training.
