Interview with young entrepreneurs in Europe

	All but the youngest pupils in this interview are already experienced entrepreneurs, and have been creating companies and manufacturing and selling products for years. With the help from their teacher, Maria Rosario, we have interviewed them about the advantages and disadvantages of entrepreneur education and eTwinning.

Marcos, Marco, Elisa, Ana, Nereida, Talia, Joana and Aida are between 3 and 10 and are the pupils of Maria Rosario, who teaches at Escuela de Entralgo in Spain (Colegio Rural agrupado Alto Nalón, Laviana).

Maria Rosario has been involved in entrepreneur education projects and participated with her pupils in her village’s market place since 1988, inspiring many other primary teachers in Spain to do the same. This year, eight of her pupils are involved in an eTwinning project with Birzebbuga Primary A from Malta.

What is the best about "the school in the market place"?

All: What we like best is selling! We have great fun, and if we earn enough money we will be able to go to the movies, go out for lunch together, buy books, and give a donation to an NGO.

Talia:  What I like best is making tea and coffee for customers, because apart from selling cakes and jam we also have a café where we sell sandwiches, juices and water for everybody and tea and coffee for grown ups.

Joana: I like cooking better, because we learn how to make sweets and we have great fun.

What is the worst about the project?

Aída: Making mistakes when we charge customers, and returning more money than we should.

Joana: That it rains, or it gets cold, and people don’t come to the market.

Nereida: That no one wants to buy our products and we go back to school with all our stuff. The night before we go to the market we are so anxious that we cannot sleep. We imagine all the things that can go wrong: Arriving late, making mistakes returning change, losing the box where we put the money, or that people don’t like our products…

What are the advantages and disadvantages of sharing products with pupils from another country?

Advantages:

Talia: We like making friends from other countries. We like it when they visit us. It was good when Polish pupils came for the Socrates project. We would love to travel to their country and visit their school.

Anna: We meet people from other countries. We get to know they culture and traditions and their routines at school.

Joana: I like making friends, more than anything else.

Disadvantages:

All: It takes them a long time to answer to our messages. We sent a letter with tourist brochures, our pictures and the products that we manufacture and it took two weeks to get to their school. We are still waiting for their answer to our first letter. Everything is very slow.
Besides, we cannot send them our cakes and jam, which is what we make to sell here. For our partners we manufacture purses and notebooks. They are not so heavy and this is very important because otherwise it costs a lot to post the parcel. The heavier the parcel, the more expensive it is to send.

What have you learned about your partners?

We learnt where Malta is on the map and that it is heavily populated and a very touristic country. What caught our attention was the great number of invasions it has suffered through history, and that it became independent only a short time ago.

Talia:  They must have great culture, thanks to the influence of so many peoples.

Ana: And they speak English!

Joana: Of course! They were an English colony!

Ana: But what interests us the most is getting to know our partners from Birzebbuga and we have not received their letters yet.

What are the most useful things you have learned thanks to this project?

Aida:  In this project you learn a lot: We know how mini-companies work and that everybody is important for its success… We also learn how to cook, design labels, speak to customers, sell, make interviews… and we have a lot of fun, too.

Talia:  We can also see what other schools manufacture…

Ana: And get new ideas!

What would you recommend to other pupils in Europe if they wanted to start a similar project?

It is real fun, we learn a lot and we meet other people… And it will be cool when the parcel from Malta arrives!

	Web Editor:	Nuria de Salvador

	Published :	30/03/2006

	Last changed :	08/02/2007

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