It’s almost November and it is that time of the year once again to prepare for the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). Every third week of November, over 140 countries all over the world commemorate a week of activities that aims to inspire people and guide them in their entrepreneurial journey. The week celebrates the drive and commitment of thousands of job-creators, livelihood providers and product innovators. The game changers. The Entrepreneurs.

Last year, Go Negosyo partnered with the British Embassy for the Global Entrepreneurship Week and launched the first Creativity and Innovation Summit. It was a well-attended summit with over 3,000 students and entrepreneurs, followed by a gathering of entrepreneurs at the residence of the then new British Ambassador Asif Ahmad. Then, we partnered with the PLDT SME Nation group for the Bossing Awards. Go Negosyo also partnered with Villar Sipag Foundation for the OFW Summit and a couple of entrepreneurship fora in various schools.

This year, Go Negosyo partners again with the British Embassy for the GEW as our institutions share in the mission to empower Filipinos to move up in life, through a mindset change and upgrading of competencies, which we help address through the free entrepreneurship education and exposure we provide in our Go Negosyo summits, seminars and Negosyo Talks.

The Global Entrepreneurship Week this year will be from November 17-23. And in an effort to innovate on our programs, we are mounting this year new activities such as a national competition and a different kind of summit.

We are launching the Go Negosyo BEST Program: Building Enterprising Students for Tomorrow. This program is dedicated to high-performing and outstanding students from different universities who will become the next generation of change makers, nation-builders and catalysts for inclusive growth. The basic idea is to have more relevant empowering activities for those who are determined to really help themselves excel.

For a start, we aim to have around 1,000 outstanding students who will participate in our one-year program with quarterly activities which will give them the learning sessions and exposures that should hone their leadership qualities and competencies. This would include fora with inspiring leaders and innovators, exposures in various fields of interests, company immersions, teambuilding workshops and other enrichment sessions to help them be more creative, innovative, and enterprising.

They may not decide to become entrepreneurs in the future, but at the very least, they will be able to gather the right knowledge and attitude from entrepreneurs who will be beneficial to them as they embark on their future endeavours. This GN BEST will further harness the strengths and competencies of these students who are also determined to push their potentials to higher levels.

I invite the schools and universities to select their top 10 students who they believe can become the future’s hope for this country.

As mentioned in my column dated September 24, Go Negosyo is hosting the Southeast Asia Mobile Application Challenge, the first in the Philippines. As of latest, we have been receiving applications for the challenge that we are running together with the Peace and Equity Foundation. Last October 9, Thursday, we organized an information session in partnership with Far Eastern University-Manila. All participants were eager to learn more about technopreneurship and SEAMAC. We are thankful for our plenary speakers Vince Golangco (WheninManila), Brian Cu (GrabTaxi) and Gian Javelona (OrangeApps) for joining us and for inspiring the students and teachers in attendance.

If you wish to know more about this Go Negosyo BEST program, you may call us at 637-9229 or visit our website, www.gonegosyo.net.

I would like to correct the name published in my column last week. Our friends, Sharmila Hiranand and Shiv Hiranand were the ones who visited our Go Negosyo booth during the AFFI Trade Show to get an advice from our Angelpreneur mentor, Jorge Wieneke.