Yesterday, 30 young people successfully concluded the seventh edition of BTC Campus programme in BTC City Ljubljana. It included additional entrepreneurial educational trainings, organised by the BTC Company in cooperation with the Centre of Business Excellence of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Ljubljana and the Employment Service of Slovenia. This year’s programme focused on the contents from the field of advanced technologies with young participants upgrading their knowledge by taking part in a hackathon.

At the start of April, the BTC Campus programme was completed by already the fourth generation of participants in Murska Sobota, while yesterday, we marked the conclusion of already its seventh edition in the Slovenian capital. The latter was attended by 30 young unemployed graduates, selected by the Employment Service of Slovenia. The BTC Campus programme has been under way in the ABC Hub in BTC City Ljubljana since the middle of March. The programme’s objective was to acquire new entrepreneurial knowledge, expand the network of connections and acquaintances, and gain new skills and thereby improve the employment possibilities of these young people. The programme brings young people the entrepreneurial skills and knowledge that are key in today’s employment market. After they complete the BTC Campus programme, the participants become employment candidates with greater competitive edge and are equipped with knowledge and self-esteem for realising their own business ideas.

Upon the conclusion of the programme, Jože Mermal, President of the BTC Management Board, pointed out: “The BTC Company has always recognised the importance of young people for the economic and social development; therefore, in the scope of the BTC Campus programme, we address the issue of young people in Slovenia being unable to find employment. This is a programme that enables the transfer of knowledge between academia and the business world, while by solving business challenges the participants can gain new knowledge that motivates them to acknowledge career opportunities. Upon the conclusion of this year’s BTC Campus, we must mention an encouraging fact that this year’s generation of young participants was above-average in their entrepreneurial activities, since most of the participants were interested in embarking on a private entrepreneurial journey which was shown by their exceptional enthusiasm to attend the BTC Campus meetings and to work on different projects which were part of the hackathon.”

With regard to its contents, this year’s programme focused on advanced technologies and their influence on the transformation of existing business models and approaches. For a second year in a row, the participants were able to upgrade their knowledge also in a hackathon. They studied the physical and virtual user experience that is provided to the visitors by BTC City, and sought possible challenge-solutions, mainly those based on online and mobile communications. At the final meeting, they presented various solutions, from mobile applications to marketing solutions, and infrastructure optimisation.

Mavricija Batič, Director General Deputy of the Employment Service of Slovenia, said: “We are pleased to see that the BTC Company also in this year decided to organise the BTC Campus and that once again the Employment Service of Slovenia is actively included in the project, which provides young employment-seekers with a chance of gaining broad entrepreneurial competencies, as well as offering them an important insight into the actual business world. With our successful proactive co-operation, we significantly contribute to reaching our strategic objective, i.e. the decrease of the unemployment rate among the young people or better said the increase of the employment rate of this target group. During the practical training and solving of actual business challenges, the participants acquaint themselves with the entrepreneurial way of thinking and thereby improve their understanding of the business world. Apart from that, they gain practical knowledge and techniques, which is of utmost importance in the more and more demanding employment market. We are happy to see that each year there is significant interest among young people who want to cooperate with experienced lecturers and experts from the business world, as well as the BTC Company. Data, spanning over several years, has shown that in a few months after the conclusion of the programme, 60 to 70 percent of all the participants find employment or start their independent entrepreneurial path. The number of employed or self-employed BTC Campus participants increases to over 80 percent in one year after the conclusion of the programme.”

The BTC Campus programme comprised 36 lessons, held by the lecturers from the Centre of Business Excellence of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Ljubljana: Rok Stritar, PhD, Blaž Zupan, PhD, and Marjan Kramar.

The BTC Campus programme has been organised in Ljubljana since 2013 and in Murska Sobota since 2016. In seven years, it saw the participation of 330 young people, 210 in Ljubljana and 120 in Murska Sobota. In a few months after the conclusion of the programme, from 60 to 70 percent of the participants gained employment or started their independent entrepreneurial path. The number of employed or self-employed BTC Campus participants increased to over 80 percent in one year after the conclusion of the programme. Speaking to the success of the programme are also numerous positive feedbacks by the participants.