Not everyone can be entrepreneur, but everyone can be entrepreneurial.

Since 2005, Go Negosyo has been advocating for a shift in the entrepreneurial mindset and attitude. We truly believe that we can address poverty in the country by engaging Filipinos in entrepreneurship and developing an optimistic, innovative, resourceful, and persevering character. While not everyone can be a businessman, there’s much that we can benefit from if we embrace an enterprising attitude and apply it to our lives.

We believe that this mindset should be cultivated and nurtured at an early age, allowing a new breed of creative and innovative entrepreneurs to be developed. Go Negosyo takes pride in leading this revolution, making mentorship more inclusive by bringing it to the younger generation here in the Philippines. Now, through the Mentor Me e-Learning powered by Singapore Polytechnic and Go Negosyo, a 15-week online entrepreneurship program, we aim to teach the skills and values needed for young entrepreneurs to succeed across Asia.

Mentor Me e-Learning is an the first e-learning entrepreneurship program which is developed and managed by partner schools and universities from all over Asia. The program provides students from partner institutions the platform and the relevant business, technical and creative skillsets needed to start, sustain and scale-up a business. The program culminates with the student teams pitching their businesses to key partners and investors with the aim of bringing the product, solution or service to a wider market.

For as low as 15 SGD per student for 15 weeks, a student taking any major can have the opportunity to access this online learning education. Schools can integrate entrepreneurship in their existing curricula providing the students mentorship, skills training, shared services and workspaces, access to market and potential investors not only locally, but even across Asia.

Through this course, students are made to identify real world problem statements and evaluate their business savviness and commitment to successfully sustain and scale up their entrepreneurial ventures. The program is delivered using the “blended learning” approach, a combination of tutorials directed towards traditional learning and online learning.

After identifying the problem statement using the Design Thinking (empathy, ideation and prototype) process, students are encouraged to find an opportunity in the problem. Online tutorials then guide the teams on how to apply the concept of a lean startup (build, measure, learn and pivot) to their business model.

Mentors will play a crucial role in the students’ entrepreneurial journeys. Weekly face-to-face mentoring sessions will be conducted by the academe mentors, who are also trained by Singapore Polytechnic, and teams will also be paired with entrepreneur mentors of Go Negosyo based on their industry. Go Negosyo’s existing pool of about 700+ mentors nationwide will participate, lending their wisdom and experience.

The program is highly experiential in nature and will entail research and fieldwork. After the first week, students will have to do regular engagements and meetings with external stakeholders relevant to the project. Within the 15 weeks, students will have gone through the whole process, from ideation to final demo day where they are required to pitch their business models and product prototypes to potential investors. Successful teams can get funded; but most importantly, they will be given constructive criticism and feedback on how they can further improve their business ventures.

After taking the program, students will be given the chance to continue incubating their ideas and they will also be encouraged to become mentors themselves to the students of future batches.

After helping entrepreneurs scale up by providing mentorship through Kapatid Mentor ME (KMME) Program, Kapatid AgriMentor ME Program (KAMMP) and Mentor ME on Wheels, we at Go Negosyo and ASEAN BAC hope to provide more opportunities and expand our influence by catering to micro-entrepreneurs through this unique partnership with Singapore Polytechnic.

This collaboration will also further institutionalize the ASEAN BAC legacy project, AMEN, which we had launched in November 2017 during the Philippine chairmanship as part of the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit. We will continue to elevate mentorship on the regional level, and ensure that ASEAN BAC becomes a stronger community partner. Hopefully, as we build stronger ties and seek the support of the respective chairs of the different ASEAN countries, we can have the program implemented all the across ASEAN.

We will proudly launch this partnership at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit 2018 from Nov. 12 to 13 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. We look forward to all your support and your amazing ideas.

We are inviting all schools and universities to join this exciting program. For interested parties, you may get in touch with Go Negosyo through gianinajoy.pce@gmail.com or elaysiongco.pce@gmail.com or call us at 637-9347.