Third BIP Cross Borders Summer Camp focuses on innovation

The third annual Student Enterprise Summer Camp organized by Business Innovation Programs (BIP), a Norwegian nonprofit organization, took place from 20^th to 25^th June 2009 at the “Korali Hotel” in Sutomore. This year’s international camp brought together 60 participants, comprising students and teachers from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Norway. All of the participants were members of the best student companies from the respective Regions and their teacher-mentors.

The Cross Borders Summer Camp is designed as a place where students and teachers from different countries can meet each other, share their experiences and make new friends. The Summer Camp is a place where the participants can also acquire new knowledge and skills useful for running their companies. The theme of the Summer Camp this year was Management and Innovation - From Business Idea to Production. The goal was to enable participants to manage a creative organisation where new ideas are created and put into production in accordance with customers’ needs.

Working hours were spent not only on the theory of management and creativity, but also on practical work in groups. Participants were divided in 9 groups and the case study was how to arrange a hotel restaurant so it can meet the needs of families with children. Participants demonstrated their creativity and used the knowledge gained during the Camp.

A Farewell Party with the theme “Strange hats”, where a lot of interesting and funny hats were shown, was organized for the last night of the Camp.

This year’s third Summer Camp was supported by the “Telenor Foundation”, who equipped an internet cafe for participants with 5 lap tops, and the company “Pro Monte” from Montenegro provided internet connection for the computers. This meant that during the Camps’ five days, internet was available for all students and teachers.

Successful Second Cross Borders Summer Camp

Business Innovation Programs (BIP) Summer Camp 2008 took place from 21st to 26th of June at the “Korali Hotel” in Sutomore, Montenegro. It was a truly international camp, bringing together 112 students and teachers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Norway and Serbia.

As participation at the Camp is a statement of acknowledgement for being the best Student Enterprise (SE) in their region, BIP wanted to give all those who came a good mix of learning and pleasure at the Camp.

Based on the experience gained from running SE Programs in the Western-Balkan countries over the last 7 years, it has become very apparent to BIP that presentation and business communication skills are what students lack the most. With this in mind, two main goals for the Camp were set by BIP:

1. To substantially improve the participants’ fundamental knowledge and skills of how to build up a presentation using rhetoric and verbal presentation techniques
2. To bring together students and teachers from different countries, with different languages and cultural backgrounds, in order that they may share experiences and learn from each other.

It was, therefore, rewarding to see that during the camp the communication and rhetoric skills of the participants rose to an evidently higher level, and that the structure of the theoretical part of the Camp will serve as a base for an advanced training in these fields for all the teachers involved in BIP’s SE Program in the Western-Balkan countries. In addition, it was also very clear that both students and teachers from the different countries and with their different languages and cultural backgrounds “found” each other, exchanged experiences and made a lot of “cross-border” friends.

See all the pictures.

The participants were selected from the most successful members of Student Enterprises from Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and Kosovo, as well as their teachers. There were 41 students and 12 teachers present, as well as an Albanian translator and five people from BIP. It is important to stress that when it comes to gender ratio among the participants, it was 70% to 30% in the girls favor, and that says a lot about the interest which is shown for this Program by female students, who see it as tool for acquiring future jobs, and professional and personal independence.

The aim of the Camp was to bring together students and teachers from different countries and with different languages and cultural backgrounds in order to share experiences and learn from each other.

Two main professional goals set by the organizers of the Camp were to learn more about financial and trade aspects of business and to strengthen the need and understanding of new teaching methods.

The Program of the Camp was designed to combine theoretical and practical work with a focus on group work. On the first day all the participants were divided in eight groups. Every group formed a company, which got a task to produce a company’s prospect to be presented to potential investors. Their work continued throughout the next days, and was concluded by the presentation of the prepared prospects. A five-member jury assessed the results of the group work, and found that the participants demonstrated a high level of understanding of the matter and put a great deal of effort in preparing the prospects. Therefore, one of the material results of the Camp is eight company prospects prepared and presented on the last day of training. The company which produced the best prospect was awarded with symbolic prizes.

As part of the practical training a visit to Centro Jadran Company was organised. It is an export-import company from Bar, a successful start-up, which has grown from a small family business to the most important foreign trade company in Montenegro in last 15 years. The participants were introduced to the staff, internal and external procedures, and organization of offices and warehouses. It was important for the participants to experience at first hand what it means to run a full-scale export-import business.