Wayra Spain has joined forces with Thinkids to collaborate on the upcoming IFEMA Thinkids Campus 2019, a summer camp designed to train future entrepreneurial leaders. With this initiative, Telefónica's open innovation hub goes beyond investing in mature, technology-based startups, contributing to the strengthening of the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem and startup culture among young Spaniards.
The Thinkids educational project, launched in 2012 and based on Learning by Doing-Playing projects developed at the MIT Lab at Stanford, focuses on developing creativity and imagination from the age of 9 to foster an entrepreneurial spirit. To achieve this, multiple intelligences dynamics and the THINKIDS 3i project methodology are used, based on fostering imagination, research, and ideation.
Wayra Spain will participate in the activities of Campus IFEMA Thinkids 2019 with the round table discussion ‘Learning to be an entrepreneur’ in which Santiago Lagier, founder of Brandtrack, a startup backed by Wayra, will explain to students how he has turned his passion for music into a life project and a globally successful startup. In addition, Wayra will share with children the keys to delivering a successful pitch and how to sell from a startup's perspective. “We want to commit to future generations and teach them subjects not taught in schools. Children and teenagers have the ability to see things from a unique point of view: if we help them develop their skills and turn their ideas into scalable projects, they will become the leaders of the future,” emphasizes Andrés Saborido, Country Manager of Wayra Spain. The campus, which will take place at the Feria de Madrid from July 1st to 12th, will be attended by more than 400 children and young people between the ages of 9 and 16, accompanied by 40 BigKids, experts from Thinkids. Participants will attend workshops and activities focused on Multiple Intelligences, where they will develop different skills such as abstract thinking, self-esteem, public speaking, and social skills, among others. Furthermore, they will develop their own entrepreneurial project using the Thinkids 3i methodology developed at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center directed by Bill Aulet. From Thinkids, Jaime del Barrio, co-founder of the Thinkids Project, emphasizes the need to cultivate, develop, and enhance imagination, creativity, curiosity, and values-based leadership from an early age. In this way, he points out, we can create an innovative society capable of finding solutions to the world's problems and needs by training tomorrow's entrepreneurs today. This 2019, Thinkids takes on a new dimension thanks to the support and drive of IFEMA's own entrepreneurial spirit and hopes to consolidate itself as the Educational Campus of imagination, creativity, and innovation, so that thousands of children and young people from Madrid and throughout Spain can acquire entrepreneurial skills and competencies, essential for our society and future.