A breath of entrepreneurial air in the Warendorf district: Start-up Week inspires students

Project Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland promotes start-up culture

An idea, a bit of courage and off you go - starting a business is not an impossibility. This was also the experience of nine grade 12 pupils of the Kopernikus-Gymnasium Neubeckum, who took part in the Start-up-Week of the joint project Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland last week. The aim of the campaign: to get young people excited about the topic of start-ups at an early age and motivate them to implement their own ideas.

There were plenty of good examples: On Monday (14 March), an American vintage bus took them on a "start-up walk" to four successful start-ups from the Warendorf district: The founder of enviado in Everswinkel started with his idea in his mother's garden shed, at hygi.de in Telgte they took a look at the huge warehouse and looked at the topic of start-ups from an economic perspective. At the Scala film theatre in Warendorf, the students were able to exchange ideas in a cosy atmosphere over lunch and learn about succession as a special form of start-up. Afterwards, they took a look at how and where start-ups can work well at the coworking space Work LnB in Beckum. The young people got to know the different founders and their approaches, asked many questions and got a taste of real start-up air.

On the following three days, they went into the workshops together with pitch trainer Dr. Elisa Franz and young founder Paul Büning: Brainstorming, pitching and filming one's own idea were on the agenda. The students developed their own start-up ideas in teams and expanded them on the following days. Afterwards, they practised the presentation and were able to film their ideas themselves.

"Really exciting ideas came out of the Start-up Week, such as laptop recycling or an app for helping in the garden," says Jennie Wolf from the joint project Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland. "We hope that one or the other has got a taste for start-ups and may soon found a successful start-up themselves."

With the skills acquired in the Start-up Week, it is also possible for the pupils to qualify for the big ideas competition in autumn 2022 by submitting their own presentation video, to present their own idea on stage and to network with well-known partners from the start-up scene in Münsterland.

The organiser of the project week is the joint project "Gründergeist #Youngstarts Münsterland", which strengthens the start-up intensity in Münsterland and opens up new start-up potential and target groups with target group-specific offers. The project is funded by the European Union and the Ministry of Economics of North Rhine-Westphalia within the framework of the ERDF call "Regio.NRW".

Münsterland e.V. is implementing the project pillar for the school sector as lead partner in cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Wirtschaftsförderung im Kreis Warendorf (gfw) and Technologieförderung Münster GmbH.

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www.youngstarts-muensterland.de