Paris, 23 May 2024 – At the Centre for student entrepreneurship and innovation (IAE) of the Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) we attended a fantastic seminar, in which 18 students from various universities (including the EURIDICE universities UPEC, CBS, ULusofona, VU Amsterdam), and their lecturers, successfully participated.
This Blended Intensive Programme, successfully organized by Dr. Laurence Beierlein from IAE-UPEC in the framework of the Erasmus mobility programme was the first activity of UPEC as a new partner in the EURIDICE project.
The course started early May, with two online lectures, followed by a full week of on-site lectures at IAE in Paris. The week in Paris was an unforgettable experience, with many social activities, walks through the Light City, including a visit to MAXIMUM, a social enterprise in Ivry-sur-Seine — a factory where fancy design-furniture is produced from surplus (waste) materials — a boat tour over the Seine, joint lunches and diners and very interesting lectures by Anne-Karen Hueske from CBS, Denmark, Homayoun Niknam from UPEC, Julie Tixier, from Université Gustave Eiffel, Céline Fauvelle from the University of Skövde, Sweden, by Béatrice Bellini from Université Paris-Nanterre, lectures from Anna Bon and Wendelien Tuijp (VU) and Élodie Brulé- Gapihan (UPEC) — in which we all discussed what it entails to be a responsible entrepreneur, and how to set up a business. One of the participating students: Oleksandr Zakotianskyi, from VU, presented his entrepreneurial idea on the first day.
Using the SEIZMIC framework, the students worked in three groups, during the whole week, on the design of a responsible business plan. On Friday 23 May they presented their business plans to an expert audience.
The three groups presented their projects: Fair Finder to provide support to start-ups, Second Chance Companion, to give lost animals in France a second life, and the winning student entrepreneurship project: Globuddy, a project to provide international students in Paris with all types of useful support and a social environment.