Entrepreneurship for Youth Program at DarüÅŸÅŸafaka High School in Turkey
"Take only memories, leave only footprints."
Our ongoing collaboration with DarüÅŸÅŸafaka High School that started as of the 2021-2022 academic year continues to evolve and grow. What started as a 1-hour/week workshop on entrepreneurship for sixteen 9th-11th grade students turned into a mandatory elective course for all 10th grades and 3 weekly workshops on Design Thinking and Innovation for 5th through 11th grades.
_JPG.jpg)
Protocol for cooperation in entrepreneurship, innovation, and business administration training for students of DarüÅŸÅŸafaka High School was signed on August 19th, 2021 by M. Tayfun Öktem, Chairman of Board of Directors of DarüÅŸÅŸafaka Society, Ebru Arpacı, General Manager of DarüÅŸÅŸafaka Educational Institutions, and Founders of the Beba Innovation and Entrepreneurship Foundation, Ümran Beba and Prof. Dr. Ali Beba. The project originally was targeting a timeframe of 3 years which has since been extended.
​
First-year encompassing the 2021-2022 academic calendar started as a weekly 1-hour workshop where 16 students attended. As of 2022-2023 academic year the program evolved into a mandatory course for all 10th grades and more workshops were added in 2023-2024 school year.
![BAŞIMA TİCARİ İCAT ÇIKAR KAPAK[1]_edited.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/92c60e_896a608baf2f4991816b1cde27b3f3d5~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_64,h_80,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/BA%C5%9EIMA%20T%C4%B0CAR%C4%B0%20%C4%B0CAT%20%C3%87IKAR%20KAPAK%5B1%5D_edited.jpg)
The curriculum and training materials were prepared jointly with Beba Foundation by using the content of Prof. Beba's book entitled "Başıma Ticari Ä°cat Çıkar", and it is expected to be integrated into the relevant curriculum of the Turkish Ministry of Education as a technical elective course. The program aims to provide the necessary knowledge and skills for doing research, project management, critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, communication, liaising, use of information technologies, making presentations, and overall financial literacy.
​
“This cooperation entered into with Beba Innovation and Entrepreneurship Foundation will develop the points of view of our students and will be very useful in order to ensure that they make entrepreneurship and innovation concepts a part of their lives. This program is planned to be sustainably continued and further developed in DarüÅŸÅŸafaka for long years,” said M. Tayfun Öktem, Chairman of Board of Directors of DarüÅŸÅŸafaka Society, in his speech at the signing ceremony of the project protocol. “It is a new and exciting subject for our students and teachers. We are happy to be a part of such a project of a specialized team which will surely open up the horizons of our students in entrepreneurship, innovation, and business administration topics in our school,” said Ebru Arpacı, General Manager of DarüÅŸÅŸafaka Educational Institutions.
The 10th grade classes and all workshops are currently being administered by Ms. Sibel Sunay at DarüÅŸÅŸafaka with support from Mr. Korhan Beba. The mandatory elective course is graded through 4 written and 4 performance projects one of which is the Business Plan Competition. Winning team of this event gets the opportunity to attend a summer camp at the prestigious Sabanci University.