PHOTO CAPTION: Vice President
and Department of Education Secretary Sara Duterte meets with Go
Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion
to explore the possibility of incorporating entrepreneurship training to support or complement
the Senior High School curriculum. Joining Concepcion at
the meeting last October 17,
2023 were Go Negosyo’s senior advisers.
Vice President
and Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary
Sara Duterte met with
Go Negosyo recently to
explore the possibility of
incorporating entrepreneurship to support or
complement the senior
high school curriculum.
In a meeting last October
17, 2023, senior advisers of Go Negosyo led by
founder Joey Concepcion,
discussed with the Vice
President several avenues
in which entrepreneurship
skills can be included in
the school curriculum,
among them through direct mentoring by veteran
entrepreneurs, and another is through the help of
private companies, specifically those engaged in the
agriculture sector.
“Our idea is if we
open up this avenue to
young people, there would
be a way for them to find
an alternative path to success,” said Concepcion.
Under the current curriculum, Filipino children in
public schools attend for
a minimum of 13 years
under the K-12 program.
An average of four more
years would be added if
the student decides to pursue higher education.
“Not all families
have the resources to support children through the
completion of the entire
curriculum,” he said. “We
could help these young
people find their path, focus on it, and maybe one
day the students can turn
it into a business,” he
said, adding that there are
many successful entrepreneurs who succeeded
even without the benefit of
higher education.
Among the possible paths that were
discussed in which entrepreneurship can be
incorporated into the curriculum isthrough proven
mentoring programs that
are already being implemented by Go Negosyo to
mentor active and aspiring entrepreneurs all over
the country. One of these
is through roadshows in
which a successful entrepreneur is sent to mentor
the students at their respective schools; another way is for students to
observe actual mentoring
with active and aspiring
entrepreneurs.
Go Negosyo has
employed different methods of reaching out to
potential entrepreneurs.
It has conducted plenary
events targeted toward
women, the youth, OFWs,
as well as thematic events
that focus on introducing
MSMEs to digital platforms and toopportunities
offered by the tourism sector. During the pandemic,
it ported its mentoring programs to social media and
conferencing platforms,
enabling it to continue
mentoring entrepreneurs
in the provinces and even
across the ASEAN region.
The Vice President welcomed the help of
Go Negosyo and shared
that the DepEd can use
its assistance in improving
its agriculture and fisheries schools as well as in
conceptualizing a way for
it to put its idle lands to
productive use in teaching
children basic gardening
and farming skills.
She also said
that entrepreneurship
mentoring can become
part of co-curricular activities, adding that preparatory activities can begin
before the DepEd pilots
the enhanced senior high
school curriculum next
school year. The feasibility
of training teachers in entrepreneurship mentoring
was also raised.
Concepcion said
entrepreneurship training for senior high school
students would be timely.
“We want to inspire the
students to become entrepreneurs because we now
have a more conduciveenvironment, thanks to how
social media and digital
technology are bringing
down so many barriers
to entrepreneurship and
making it more inclusive,”
he said.
This would not
be the first time that Go
Negosyo has collaborated
with government agencies
for its entrepreneurship
advocacy. Its formal training programs – KMME
and KAMMP– are implemented in partnership
with the Department of
Trade and Industry and
the Department of Agriculture, respectively, while
its mall-based mentoring
roadshow 3M on Wheels
is conducted in coordination with local government
units. Its regional mentoring program ASEAN Mentorship for Entrepreneurs
Network is implemented
through the ASEAN Business Advisory Council
and the ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprises, and is funded
by the Japan ASEAN Integration Fund.
Accompanying
Concepcion during the
meeting with VP Duterte
were Go Negosyo Senior Advisers Engr. Merly
Cruz, Josephine Romero
and Dr. William Dar, and
Executive Director Mina
Akram. Attending from
DepEd were ASec. for
Curriculum and Instruction Alma Ruby Torio and
USec. Atty. Michael Wesley Poa. PR