For the fifth year in a row, Young Entrepreneurs Program was organized by NUCC  with the financial support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This year the program took place in Oslo, Trondheim, Kyiv and Lviv where twenty ambitious participants from Norway and Ukraine studied Norwegian-Ukrainian cooperation and worked on four different business cases. The business cases were aimed on deepening the bilateral cooperation within fields of IT, Manufacturing, Agriculture and Energy (Electric Vehicles) taking sustainable environmental development into account.

The program started in Norway in the beginning of September. NUCC together with the Norwegian partner BI Norwegian Business School conducted a study week full of lectures on Norwegian economic model, business ethics, good corporate governance, as well as entrepreneurship and differences in work cultures. In addition to the theoretical lessons, the participants met with relevant companies, such as Evry, eco.logic, ICT Norway, Honningcentralen, Tomra, TotalCtrl, Innovation Norway, that inspired our young entrepreneurs to look for fresh business ideas and start working on the business cases. In Trondheim we got to visit one of the best technical universities in the world – NTNU. In Trondheim participants also had meetings with Trondheim commune, Chamber of Commerce in Trondheim and Norges Bondelag.

After the two months group work the participants met again in Ukraine in the beginning of November. Together with our Ukrainian partner Lviv Business School (LvBS) we organized lectures in both Kyiv and Lviv on Ukrainian economics, corporate social responsibility, creative thinking, in addition to company visits such as Mykko, Kormotech and Sambay. Participants also had the chance to meet authorities in both countries, such as the president of the Norwegian parliament and the mayor of Lviv.

The program was wrapped up with business case presentations, where the jury evaluated the group work, business ideas, creativity, in addition to how the ideas could contribute to the development of the Norwegian-Ukrainian business relations and attract investors. And the winner this year is the Energy Group (EV), our sincere congratulations!

We would like to thank our partners BI Norwegian Business School and LvivBS for an amazing cooperation, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Norway and the Norwegian Embassy in Ukraine for the receptions organized for our young entrepreneurs. And most of all we are grateful to all the groups for their efforts, dedication and thorough work. We hope that the participants will keep in touch with us, each other as well as our YE alumni network and we are looking forward to seeing your successful stories!

The application process will soon be opened for the next year, therefore stay tuned and follow our news on the webpage and Facebook page.