Proactive Training

Proactive Training is a project promoting entrepreneurship education, teamwork, and creativity among young people through a process of career guidance, self-awareness and personal skills recognition in schools. The project has two initiatives: Simula-Impresa (business simulation), for lower secondary school students and teachers (mainly Year 3) and Impresa in Classe (business in the classroom) for upper secondary school students.

The activities start at the beginning of school year and end in springtime, with a total of 70 hours of both curricular and extracurricular phases.

Simula-Impresa was born out of a project that has been running in several schools in Bari since 2014. The classes divide into small groups, which form the Sim-Imprese (Sim businesses).

Students of the Sim-Imprese must go through different steps: they divide the tasks, create a valid business idea, discovering their own interests and talents, and simulate all the typical stages from creation to marketing. In simulating a small company, students have to do research, contact entrepreneurs, create budgets, and plan distribution and marketing tools.

Impresa in Classe, on the other hand, focuses on direct collaboration between secondary school students and businesses. This involves managing a real venture by creating a product or service together with a business.

Students start with marketing research, deliver a "prototype", and end with an advertising campaign to promote it. A important part of the process is visiting the partner-company and an interviewing key industry professionals.

The Sim Imprese and Imprese in Classe participate in a competition, where the best are awarded for their innovation, sustainability and communication skills. The jury is composed of experts and of independent local representatives of businesses. The contest takes place at the closing event (called Show Camp Future) of the initiative, where students and teachers can also discuss about the experience and career guidance. 

The project is carried out in accordance with the recent Guidelines on Pathways for Key Skills and Career Guidance (known as PCTO) adopted by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research in 2019. Proactive Training was launched in collaboration with StartNet, the GET network and Confindustria Puglia thanks to the financial support of Regione Puglia, and was launched in September 2019 in twelve secondary schools (six lower and six upper) in various towns and cities across Apulia.

Proactive Training Project Integration

The first edition ended in December 2020 with an online award ceremony for the best videos and projects (Watch the video on Facebook, also read in News). A second edition is being planned for the 2021-2022 school year, extended to 16 schools in Apulia.

Read the Proactive Training Guide (Italian language).