INACAP INTRODUCE CHILEAN YOUTHS TO THE SAGE NETWORK

From what I observed on my recent visit to Chile was on 18-30 October, there is great hope for Chile’s future. While I was in Chile, I witnessed dozens of outstanding entrepreneurial ideas and presentations by teenagers in six cities: Arica, Punta Arenas, Coyhaique, Osorno, Temuco and Santiago. These six cities hosted Go! Innova competitions directed by INACAP.

Prior to these competitions, nine other cities hosted similar competitions sponsored by INACAP. The winning team from each of these 15 regional competitions advanced to the national competition in Santiago on 19 November. It has been reported to me that the top three teams at the national event came from Santiago, Arica, and Temuco, with the Temuco team claiming national honors. The Temuco teens are from the village of Vilcún. They wrote an outstanding business plan and created a prototype to sell special teas from their region. The teas are arranged in a unique fashion and packaged in a hand-painted wooden box highlighting the heritage of their regions’ ancestors.

As the national winner, the Vilcún teens will now represent Chile at a global tournament in Manila, Philippines in August. This national tournament is hosted by Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship—SAGE—a non-profit organization that I founded in 2002.

Not only do I run the SAGE program, I am also a university business professor at California State University, Chico. I have long been interested in the powerful formula of commercial and social entrepreneurship, employing a virtual untapped army of community service providers who can apply their textbook theories to real-world problems. These service providers are university students (e.g., INACAP students) who work as coaches to teams of innovative and industrious high school students who start real businesses by participating in Go! Innova.

With today’s technology, the university and high school students are beginning to build a worldwide network of business colleagues and friends, leading to the creation of economic, social and political capital. This capital can increase the standard of living for the entire world. Currently, SAGE is present in 22 countries (Chile is #22!). My goal is to be active in 40 countries by 2018.

The SAGE idea, like Go! Innova, is modeled after interscholastic competition. A team of innovative high school students is formed, either by the students themselves or in conjunction with an entrepreneurial teacher. The team can be part of an existing class, or it can be co-curricular. At the end of the academic year, the teams travel to a tournament to present the results of their innovations to a panel of jurists recruited from the business and civic community. Unlike sports, where teams are judged on their athletic prowess, SAGE teams are judged on creativity, innovation, and market viability.

Like Go! Innova teens, a SAGE team must launch and operate a business enterprise during the year. The enterprise must be either a socially-responsible business, where the primary goal is to make a profit, or a social enterprise business, where the primary goal is to address a community problem using entrepreneurial skills.

As is now being done in Chile, under the direction of INACAP, SAGE teams then enter a regional tournament, where the top teams go on to represent their region at a national tournament.

The best teams at the national tournament, like the teens from Vilcún, will represent their country at the SAGE World Cup. The next World Cup takes place in Manila, Philippines on 11-16 August, 2016.

Now in its 14th year, the SAGE World Cup host cities the past eight years have been Shanghai, Odessa, Abuja, Brasilia, Cape Town, Buffalo, Moscow, and Seoul. No other teen entrepreneurship programme has such a global presence, and I am pleased that INACAP and SAGE have formally entered into a strategic partnership.

In closing, I would like to thank INACAP for introducing Chilean youth to SAGE through its Go! Innova program, and we look forward to seeing Chilean teens in Manila next August. I wish them the very best at their first SAGE World Cup competiton.

Curtis L.DeBerg
Founder
SAGE Global
www.sageglobal.org