Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

Image: GET’10 in East AfricaImage: GET’10 in East AfricaGroup for business development. Nine such groups competed and developedbusiness plansClassroom lecture. Each day there are four two-hour lectures/seminarswith group workshops in the eveningship education programme that is interdisciplinary and integratestechnology, business and law.Global EDISON Academy and Global Entrepreneurship EducationalProgramIn order to realize the educational goal outlined above, HGUcreated Global EDISON Academy (GEA), a new school thatoffers bachelor’s degrees in entrepreneurship, allowing studentsto co-major in entrepreneurship. It also developed the GlobalEntrepreneurship Education Program (GEEP) and GlobalEntrepreneurship Training (GET), a one-week intensive trainingcourse in entrepreneurship for future leaders of developing countries,under the partial financial support of the Korea UNDP andthe Korean Government. HGU has been offering the GET sessionsin developing countries under the auspices of the UNESCOUniversity Twinning and Networking Programme (UNITWIN)on capacity-building for sustainable development for developingcountries, of which HGU is the host university. It has beenoffering these sessions in cooperation with the UNITWIN partneruniversities, whose membership comprises 23 representativesfrom 13 countries. Each training session is not a trivial undertaking– nearly twenty HGU student helpers, along with five ormore professors and staff, travel to the partner country with allthe required supplies and tools/equipment. A number of studenthelpers and faculty members join from local partnering schools.However, the effort has been highly rewarding. So far, five suchsessions have been offered in four different countries, and manyof the graduates have already started companies, at least one ofthem with tens of millions of USD in revenue. Many studentsregard the session as a life-changing experience.The last session, GET 10 in East Africa, was held in Nairobi,Kenya. Taylor University from the US also joined as a partneringschool as part of the North-North leg, and St. Paul’s Universityin Kenya as the North-South leg of the North-North-South-Southquadrangular cooperative effort that HGU is pursuing. Also, HGUopened its first Regional Center for Entrepreneurship Education inNairobi, in cooperation with St. Paul’s University, to offer sustainedentrepreneurship education for the East African region in betweenthe regular GET Sessions as part of the South-South leg of the quadrangularcooperative effort.HGU’s effort to propagate entrepreneurship educationThe GET and related activities, especially the North-South-South triangular and North-North-South-Southquadrangular cooperation that HGU started practising,are being watched by the UN and world communitieswith great interest. In order to expand its network ofcooperation, HGU also joined UN Academic Impact(UNAI) and is planning a UNAI international experiencesharingmeeting in Korea in the second half of 2011.Handong Graduate School of Global Entrepreneurship andDevelopmentHGU is opening Handong Graduate School of GlobalEntrepreneurship and Development (HGS GE&D)with the primary goal of raising highly skilled professionalsfor world development among future leadersin low-income countries who can use entrepreneurshipas their main tool. It will offer a Master’s Degreein Global Entrepreneurship and Development andprovide high-level education in entrepreneurship asthe main tool for capacity-building for sustainabledevelopment.The future of the fishing rodHGU believes that the world community should assistlow-income countries by offering entrepreneurshipeducation specifically targeting future leaders. Theuniversity is convinced that an entrepreneurship educationwill give people the hope, motivation and skillsnecessary for the development of their countries on thebasis of their own culture and vision of development.The traditional approaches for assisting low-incomecountries tend to target mainly projects designed anddeveloped externally, but HGU’s approach is different,focusing on educating people to be independent andcreate their own business opportunities, thus encouragingdevelopment that is sustainable because it isendogenous. Going back to the metaphor used above,this is how HGU provides a fishing rod for long-termsustainable development.[ 168 ]