For a second year Junior Achievement and the British Council will deliver the Skills@Work Challenge, an enterprise competition for young people from vocational schools aged 15-18, from 9 countries in the South East Europe Region (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Israel, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey) and the UK.

The Skills@Work Challenge is a series of national competitions, leading to an international competition, aiming to encourage young people to use their skills in enterprising and innovative ways, ultimately enhancing their employability and entrepreneurial flair. Last year more than 1000 students took part in the national competitions.

The forthcoming national competition is officially supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Science and will be held in partnership with Microsoft Bulgaria.

The national competition will be a one-day ‘challenge’ to take place in Sofia on 20 November 2009. In mid October Junior Achievement Bulgaria opened the selection process for students from the whole country who can now apply for participation in the challenge. The selected applicants will travel to Sofia for the contest. The competition will start in the morning on 20 November and the participants will be divided in groups. For a period of 6 hours they will look for a solution of a business case given by our business partner Microsoft Bulgaria. Their solution needs to be innovative, efficient, feasible and of social benefit. Each team has to come up with a business strategy and present it to the jury and the other teams.

The winners of the national competition will take part in the international final in Serbia in 2010 after a successful completion of an English language test.

To apply for participation in the national Skills@Work Challenge on 20 November, please click here.
Application deadline is 4 November.

Find out more information about the last year competition. Take a look at the Skills@Work Challenge video.

Skills@work is a part of the Skills for Employability programme.