On 23 September, the BTC Company, together with its project partners – the Employment Service of Slovenia and the Centre of Business Excellence of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana, launched the 11th edition of the BTC Campus educational entrepreneurship programme. This unique socially responsible project, which has been running in Slovenia since 2013, has already provided more than 410 unemployed people and jobseekers with new entrepreneurial skills and competences over the past ten years. This year’s programme, which is being carried out at the ABC Hub in BTC City Ljubljana and will run until Thursday, 24 October, is being attended by 30 unemployed people and jobseekers.
The BTC Campus educational programme has been prepared and will be delivered by lecturers from the Centre of Business Excellence of the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana Dr. Rok Stritar, Dr. Blaž Zupan and Marjan Kramar. The main purpose of the project is to improve people’s employment opportunities by providing them with advice, practical entrepreneurial skills and new acquaintances, or to encourage them to develop their own business ideas. The project is aimed at unemployed candidates of all ages.
The programme also involves tackling the BTC Challenge. This year, the challenge is focused on promoting intergenerational cooperation, with an emphasis on Generations Alpha and Z, through the perspectives of BTC visitors, customers and employees. In today’s fast-changing world, it is crucial to establish and nurture positive intergenerational relationships. These have an impact on corporate culture, as well as on the culture of society at large and on changing shopping and leisure trends. The challenge aims to develop projects and solutions that promote intergenerational cooperation and strengthen relationships with both generations on multiple levels.
Jure Marjanovič, Director of the BTC City business unit and of BTC Legal Affairs, opened the event by saying, “Since 2013, the BTC Campus, designed to encourage business-minded individuals, has been successfully pursuing the goal of helping unemployed people acquire new skills and the competences they need to successfully enter the labour market. This year, we are paying special attention to the challenge of intergenerational cooperation. We believe that mutual understanding and cooperation between the generations forms the foundation of any future development of companies and of society as a whole. We are proud that the BTC Campus programme not only improves employment opportunities, but also strengthens the Slovenian business ecosystem as a whole and creates opportunities for talent of all ages.”
“It is a programme that encourages creative thinking by focusing on a particular innovation methodology. In addition to identifying new ideas and bringing them to life, participants acquire a range of business skills that can support them in their own journeys as entrepreneurs or help them as they find work in larger systems. At the same time, they build their project management skills, teamwork skills and, especially this year, skills pertaining to cooperation among different generations and communication skills, which form the basis of successful work in any business environment,” added Monika Lapanja, Director of the Centre of Business Excellence at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana.
“The BTC Campus, in which our Service has been a partner for many years, is a very intensive programme that enables jobseekers to develop or strengthen their entrepreneurial competences and opens up new job opportunities for many of them. At least thirty candidates are offered this chance every year – so far more than 400. With low unemployment, structural disparities and fewer young people entering the job market, many employers are facing a labour shortage. There is, in particular, a growing demand for workers with competences, which will only intensify in the future given the present megatrends of an ageing population, the digital and green transition, and artificial intelligence. We will need to adapt quickly to these trends as a society and as individuals, with all generations playing an important role. In both last year’s and this year’s selection of candidates, we left the age group completely open, meaning that the programme will now involve no less than three generations, Generation Z, Generation Y and Generation X, which we believe further enhances it. I wish everyone starting the BTC Campus to make the most of the programme, the stimulating environment and the highly experienced mentors to discover their potential and to pursue their professional and personal opportunities. Past experience has shown that job seekers with an entrepreneurial mindset and competences are more successful in meeting the challenges of a rapidly changing labour market than others, which makes the BTC company’s contribution to promoting entrepreneurship and future economic development extremely important,” said Greta Metka Barbo Škerbinc, Director General of the Employment Service of Slovenia.
The primary focus of the project has remained the same since it first started in 2013 – talent development and competence building. In addition to positive feedback from the participants, the numbers bear resolute testimony to its success: on average, more than 86% of the participants get a job or start their own business in the first six months after finishing the course.
PHOTO: Studio Bomba
