With 18 of his students 1st GEL of Elefsinawho create their own student “start up” at school, participating in the educational program “Virtual Business” of Junior Achievement GreecePrime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met in order to support their business idea while giving his own advice and directions.

“If there’s one thing we’ve achieved as a government over these four years, it’s freeing up schools and empowering education executives to be able to innovate, experiment and engage with a range of initiatives aimed at making school basically more interesting, beyond its classic obligation”, said the Prime Minister while talking to the students who developed the rationale of their business idea.

“It is our duty to equip you with skills that will be extremely necessary no matter what you choose to do with your life.”

He added that “education itself is changing, becoming more experiential, our world is becoming more and more complex, the school textbook cannot always keep up with the speed with which knowledge evolves, which means that through school we have an obligation to be able to bring you into contact not only with this knowledge which is developing so rapidly, but also to equip you with skills which will be extremely necessary, no matter what you choose to do with your life.”

“It is very important, through our schools, to give children the opportunity to have different stimuli. Because we’re also in a phase where I think we’ve gotten over some complexes as a society about entrepreneurship and the way a young person perceives their future or dealing with these issues, I think any simulation like that brings you together with what you may choose to do next in life. It is an extremely useful experience for you and it certainly enables you to better understand how the economy and the business world really work,” the Prime Minister said.

THE Kyriakos Mitsotakis emphasized the importance of cooperation within the team. “For me the most important thing is that it puts you in a collaborative framework where you distribute roles and find a way to ultimately become better as a team. One of the big issues that I think we need to promote more and through our schools – and we do this to a large extent through many actions that we try to introduce – is precisely this concept, that whatever you do in your life , you will work in groups. That’s for sure. And what it means to finally work in a team harmoniously, to distribute roles, to manage the different opinions, the disagreements, which may arise, this fertile diversity that ultimately makes our teams always better and more productive. It is excellent that you can have a familiarity with such processes and with projects which have a form of complexity, which require repeated meetings, where you start a goal, try to implement it, end up presenting what you have finally thought to some others” , noted the Prime Minister.

“Pandemic Museum”, the virtual business created by the students of the 1st GEL Elefsina

Students create a “Museum of Pandemics». This idea was created by the children while developing an Erasmus+ project on entrepreneurship during the lockdown.

The children thought of creating a hyperlocal museum in Eleusis (with fixed and mobile sections, periodic exhibitions, VR projections, digital content, events, etc.) which would be informative about all the pandemics that have occurred since ancient times and at the same time analyze the historical, medical, psychological and economic dimensions – impacts and how these transformed societies in each time frame in which they appeared.

The ultimate goal is the transformation of intangible concepts and experiences into “tangible evidence” that will be “placed” in the museum offering a unique experience between the physical and digital worlds with the use of new technologies such as augmented and virtual reality or artificial intelligence .
The vision of the students is the creation of an ecosystem of knowledge, research and innovation with a local and supra-local character, having as its main mission the communication to the general public of pandemic stories over time, their effects and their role as catalysts of change and development in the formation of the sciences as well as of social and economic reality worldwide.

The students Nikolaos Simakos, Neoklis Tzinieris, Efthymia Kavarnou, Eleonora Kolai, Eliza Laini, Triantafyllia Katsamagou, Amalia Plexida, Angelos Haniotakis, Sotiria Kosidi, Dimitrios Sykas, Athanasios Giokas, Nikolaos Hanas, Georgia Triantopoulou, George Liaskos, Minas Sofikitis took part in the meeting. , Efstratios Gigantas, Filothei Kalligeri, Ioanna Rantza and Christiana Liagouri.

The Deputy Minister of Digital Governance Theodoros Livanios, the Director of the 1st GEL Elefsinas Dionysios Palimeris, the teacher and manager of the “Virtual Business” program at the school Katerina Dretaki, the teacher Eleni Korogianni, the teacher Christina Karavasilis, the President of JA Greece, Markos also participated Veremis, the Managing Director of JA Greece, Argyris Tzikopoulos, the Director of Communication of JA Greece Maria Giannetou, the Business Consultant of EY Greece and volunteer-consultant of the school’s “Virtual Business” Aliki Aravantinou, the Director of Brand, Marketing and Communication of EY Greece Evangelos Maximos A. Skopelitis and the Deputy Director of Brand, Marketing and Communication of EY Greece Nadia Deliargyri.