Educated Enterprise

Our mission: Contributing to global sustainable and inclusive growth through educating and empowering generations

Our vision: Unlocking human creativity and leveraging technological advancements through enterprise education

Our objectives:

• Build a holistic development, sustainable impact - oriented enterprise education program and publications for children and youth;
• Provide policy recommendations on future - ready educational program, developed and based on proven methods and tools;
• Create an intergenerational community which acknowledge and act upon the ongoing shifts and future prospects.

Our core values: 

• United: Intergenerational and multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration
• Impact - driven: Sustainability and inclusivity topics are at the heart 
• Future - oriented: Life skills are developed in two main mainstreams - Digital skills and soft skills  

Enkhzul Orgodol or Zula, in short, is the founder and chief advisor of Educated Enterprise /EE/ LLC. She acted as the CEO from October 2018 to October 2022, until she took on a multi - sectoral coordination role at the government. Since October 2022, she has devoted on average 10 hours to coach the team, advise on certain project and program planning and implementation, including the enterprise program development. 

Zula single handedly took charge of all the program and project development, organization development, stakeholder engagement, among others, when EE was first registered as an educational NGO in 2017 until it was restructured as a social enterprise/LLC in 2018.

Between 2018 and 2022, Zula continued developing the program and project concepts, ran day - to - day operations and kept on growing the enterprise into multiple directions. 

Zula holds Master's degree in Public Policy from the National University of Singapore and Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the National University of Mongolia.

Currently, Zula dedicates on average 10 hours to the Educated Enterprise programs and projects, mostly as an advisor and a resource person. She has been focusing on developing an assessment form/questionnaire for the Educated enterprise program students for the past couple of months. However, she has been in desperate need of experts in the field of impact evaluation to guide and support her in developing the right impact evaluation tool for the enterprise program Educated has been developing and testing, with a small number of students. Currently, through its series of programs, Educated has involved around 100 middle to high schools students, aged between 10 - 17. The main program is a 12 week (twice a week) enterprise development program, which has three main components. The three components are self - expression (debating and public speaking), creative thinking and expression (digital arts and DIY) and project management (social or environmental project planning, implementation and reporting).

Dulguundusal, who is the full - time program manager at Educated Enterprise, will be the main personnel on the ground to implement and report back on the impact assessment etc. Dulguundusal has been acting as the enterprise program manager since January 2023 and she also has been working with Zula in terms of assessing the students' progress through her facilitation and observation. She acted as the main facilitator of the creative part of the program during the F22 and S23 seasons, also. Before joining the Educated Enterprise full - time, Dulguundusal founded and built a sustainability - driven project "I am Earthman" with others for a few years.

Therefore, Zula and Dulguundusal are the perfect team leader and the member to work with the MIT Solve Fellows during the 12 week program which also coincides with the existing 12 week program length of the Educated enterprise program.

Guiding children and youth to be more future ready through an impact - driven, enterprise education program

Through “enterprise” education program development and dissemination, we aim to solve the following two problems; first, lack of future – oriented, quality education program in public schools and second, lack of SDG – aligned, impact – driven, practical program in Mongolia and beyond. 

Children and youth are facing a challenging and rapidly changing, uncertain future. The COVID19 pandemic, Russia – Ukraine “war”, rise of Artificial Intelligence etc are the proof. However, in Asia, including Mongolia, theory – based, academic teaching and learning, which does not take into account such challenging and rapidly changing future, are still prevalent, in public schools, which make up around 80% of the total schools in Mongolia. As a result, when children and youth graduate from their respective educational institutions, they encounter major challenges in meeting certain expectations from various societal groups, including employers, university professors and even their families and friends. In Mongolia, for example, fresh university graduates spend on average 2.9 years in securing a stable job and/or having a sustainable income source because of the said mismatch between their skills and life expectations and those of the employers. Students are basically taught that as long as they get good grades in their exams, they are ready to enter workforce, ready for their future. On the other hand, employers/organisations have started leaning on enterprise skills, with the need for such skill sets to increase in their employees. Moreover, while private schools, with high tuition, usually are equipped with sophisticated IT and science labs as well as innovative learning tools and methods, public schools do not normally have such resources which allow their students to gain the necessary digital and life skills which are increasingly important for their future.

Additionally, with increasing global issues like climate change and inequalities, actions towards SDGs require coordinated and combined efforts from not only governments and businesses, but also from citizens, in particular, from children and youth.

Enterprise education looks beyond professional skills, builds holistic life skills, and encourages civic engagement that applies in a range of contexts. It also encourages engagement with family, community, and broader society. Plus, enterprising behaviours such as teamwork, need for achievement and need for creativity, enterprise education, and enterprise pedagogy assist with the skills to deal with change. Hence, to tackle the lack of future – oriented, quality education, that also has SDG – orientation, Educated Enterprise has been designing and piloting an enterprise program, encompassing the enterprise pedagogy with the ultimate goal to inculcate enterprising behaviours in our students since 2021. 

The Enterprise Program at Educated has been developed based on the General Enterprising Tendencies (GET) concept which advises individuals to develop five enterprising tendencies: need for autonomy, need for achievement, creativity, calculated risk - taking and drive and determination. It also promotes individuals to be able to work in teams and make contributions at community level. This concept, promoting lifelong development of such fundamental behaviors, is extremely relevant for individuals in going forward, in this rapidly changing world. 

We have aimed to develop a package of educational programs, which will all be related to developing ones’ enterprising skills or ability to get a project done, particularly aged between 10 and 16, using an enterprise pedagogy. 

Enterprise pedagogy has a participant focus; hence, it deeply considers the learning variability of the students. There are three levels of enterprise education that can be incorporated:

• • Education through Enterprise – using enterprising pedagogy to develop participant-focused learning opportunities

  • Education about Enterprise – knowledge about the world of work and business
  • Education for Enterprise – promotes enterprising behaviors and attitudes to deal with change and opportunities

We aim to develop core competency, that play significant importance in ones' self - satisfaction and career success, yet not thoroughly taught in schools.

We deliver our services in the following ways:
- Develop and carry out an educational, extracurricular program, twice a week, covering the following key areas: debating/ public speaking, digital arts and project management;

-  Write - up, publish and sell children's books, for ages as early as 4, with enterprise education elements like project management and social change;

- Create some content where we explain what enterprise education is and give lectures, talks to children, youth and parents on enterprise education and future - ready skills etc during events and workshops;

- Conduct research/impact assessment on our program and publications and communicate the results to education policy - makers (planned).

Until now, we have used some foundational research, literature review and desktop research, and some formative research, through our enterprise program.  

According to one of our key foundational research resources - Leuven Education College, “Enterprise: the application of creative ideas and innovations to practical situations” and “Entrepreneurship: the application of enterprise skills specifically to creating and growing organisations in order to identify and build on opportunities.” Furthermore, according to the Leuven Education College, to extrapolate from that Enterprise Education is thus education which develops the capacity for students to generate and demonstrate how ideas are developed into innovative products and services which deliver cultural, economic, environmental, intellectual, and social value. This involves a mix of business & market awareness, professional skills development, and mindset development around personal values, motivation, risk-tolerance, and opportunity assessment. 

Other UK institutions like Nesta has developed a Future of Work guidebook as well as the Power of Experimentation documents which entail some of our guiding topics. 

As for the formative research, we have received and conducted a series of Training of Trainers by our international resource person, Eric Clock, who has been actively championing about enterprise pedagogy and has founded an educational NGO Little Go Getters. Besides, we have had our students fill out evaluation forms for us, interviewed some of the parents and created a cycle where all the trainers/facilitators assess their performance, perceived effectiveness of their teaching and the students' growth, among others.

To continue some of the findings shared above, we would like to highlight the following findings which are all taken from the respective researchers' works.

“While researchers are continually striving to learn more about the entire entrepreneurial process” (Kuratko, 2005 p. 579) educators appreciate and understand that learning through, for and about enterprise can help motivate students, and can promote freedom and choice. Alongside this, it can help develop in young people the enterprising skills and competencies required for working in the flexible market economy we have today and can also promote entrepreneurship. Enterprise education helps challenge this order by placing self-employment and entrepreneurship on a par with employment. At the same time it helps young people develop a range of skills and attitudes that are useful for modern employment as well as widening their social perspectives.

It promotes the creation of opportunities, a more “go-getting” society, a more “can-do” culture and can thus be used to challenge established power and authority as well as the status of inherited (or “old”) money, and can lead to a qualitative improvement in life chances. It shapes, influences and changes the character and quality of social, economic, personal, political and other relations. But most of all it can help:
. drive forward innovation and change in products and services;
. deliver social and economic uplift; and improve the stock of SMEs and enhance the wealth creation process.

One aim of enterprise education is in part to break the cycle of the culture of poverty and to bring about socio-economic and community regeneration. It contributes to the building of effective links between education and work (Wilson, 2012) and increases the self-worth of individuals involved.

As mentioned in the previous sections, we have been developing our bespoke enterprise program, focused on teenagers, since fall 2021. Since then, each season, we reflected on our results, applied certain changes and grew our program around the following three main areas: self – expression, creative – thinking and teamwork. During the most recent spring 2023 season, we aimed to develop an impact assessment tool on our own. However, we realized we needed experts’ guidance and support on this area. Therefore, it is the perfect time to engage in a LEAP project for us during our upcoming season, the 12 – week program.

 Below is a brief milestone for our enterprise program development and further planning:

 Fall 2021 – Needs assessment for a soft skills development program for teenagers, to complement their predominantly theory – based, academic learning at schools;

• Winter 2022 – Designing and offering of one week pilot program on holistic development of teenagers; The topics included debating, public speaking, project management, creative expression, growth mindset and personal finance;
• Spring 2022 – Offering of a 12 – week debating program and recruited the first batch of students; The debating topics were mainly SDG – related and the teaching method was student – oriented, with coaching sessions;
• Fall 2022 – Received a 2 day enterprise facilitation workshop from our international partner, who is an expert on entrepreneurship and enterprise learning; Designed another package of programs on project management and creative – thinking and expression; Ended up running two Debating courses, one in English and other in Mongolian as well as an Arts & DIY course, one in English and other in Mongolian;
• Winter 2023 – Reflected on the Fall 2022 courses and re- designed the project management course and ran a mini pilot during this winter, one week program;
• Spring 2023 – Re – designed all the three topics as an interrelated and interconnected parts of our enterprise program; Ran another round of 12 – week program, inclusive of debating and public speaking, digital arts and project management components, only in English this time;
• Fall 2023 – Planning to offer and run the same 12 – week program as the Spring 2023 under one or several mini, impact projects; The main objective of this upcoming intake is to be able to carry out the impact assessment as planned before;

 We desperately need expert advising and coaching on the impact assessment of our enterprise program to compare how enterprise program is developing the students' enterprising behaviors as compared to the traditional, theory – based, academic program offered in Mongolian schools. With our alternative education program, we hope to be able to contribute and offer tangible inputs to the ongoing development of a revision to the educational core program, which will be followed between 2024 - 2036, for 12 years, taken charge by the Ministry of Education of Mongolia. 

We would like our LEAP project to help us answer the following questions:

• Which is the minimum age group that our enterprise program should be offered to? If we need to adapt the program length for different age groups.
• What kinds of tools and resources are most suitable to be used to increase the effectiveness of the curriculum? If the educational books we have developed, initially for the age group of 4 – 7, can be used as resources.
• What kinds of requirements should we our facilitators meet? Do our facilitators have to have teaching degrees etc.

Our desired outputs of the 12 – week LEAP project are: impact assessment form/tool of the students’ enterprising behavior/tendency development, facilitators’ guidebook and a set of tools/materials to be used by the facilitators during our enterprise courses.

Currently, we have a very basic assessment form, which we distribute to the students to fill out at the end of our 10 – 12-week programs. This form needs to be more comprehensive and should be able to be used in the beginning of the program also; so that, we can compare the difference in the students. The GET or the General Enterprising Tendency test was once used by the UNDP Mongolia to gauge the enterprising tendencies of Mongolian youth; however, its questions are more relevant for young adults and adults, rather than children. Therefore, we desperately need assistance in developing a customized assessment form/tool which can be used in the beginning and at the end of our 10 – 12-week program. It would be best it can also help us measure the progress of the students during the program implementation.

Our team have also started developing a guidebook for the facilitators, based on our curriculum development and running of the debating/public speaking, digital arts and project management courses. However, it needs more cohesion in terms of directing the three separate courses towards a shared goal of building enterprising tendencies/behaviors of the students.

With regard to the course materials and different kinds of tools like digital device, certain applications or frameworks, our facilitators have been testing out the ones they believed those were relevant and effective. We have been aiming to develop a set of tools/frameworks/materials to be used by our facilitators; however, we have not had the human and the time resources to do so until now.

Therefore, during the Fall 2023 season, with the support from the LEAP fellows, we really hope to be able to bring out these outputs to strengthen the evidence of our future – oriented, life skills development enterprise education program.

We plan to put these outputs, the impact assessment form/tool, the facilitators' guidebook and the course materials, into action in the following steps:

• Spring 2024 – Planning to start offering the 12 – week program in  partnership with selected public and private schools and apply the impact assessment on a bigger number of students, of a wider variety of age groups;
• Fall 2024 – Aiming to scale up the program implementation, both in the capital city and in rural areas in Mongolia

Besides the above target milestones to achieve, we plan to do the below, with the exact, expected outputs:

1. Prepare up to 10 master trainers/facilitators, who are from Educated team and contracted consultants during Winter 2024;

2. Train up to 100 trainers, from public schools in Ulaanbaatar and rural areas, and guide them through the facilitators' guidebook and the course materials to use;

3. Create a package of necessary online content, to be able to reach out to a wider audience, by using the coursebook and guidebook, within 2024. 

4. Develop a package of course materials etc to meet different needs of the marginalized groups, like the disabled, between 2024 - 2025.

Let us share the additional long - term plans in the next section.

We aim to make our future - oriented, life skills development program available not only in Mongolia, but also in other developing countries, especially those in the Southeast Asia and Central Asia, whose population have similar characteristics to Mongolians.

In the short term, development of an effective impact assessment tool will help us boost our confidence, explain our method to more children, their parents, and most importantly to education policy - makers, who are in great need to alternative education solutions and methodologies to meet up with the social demand and rapidly changing world.

In the long term, besides, scaling up to public schools in Mongolia, we aim to achieve the following:

• Develop a licensable program (with the handbooks, facilitation guides etc) in Mongolian by June 2024;

• Start offering the licensable program in Mongolian by September 2024;

• Develop a licensable program (with the handbooks, facilitation guides etc) in English by January 2024;

• Start offering the licensable program in English by February 2025.

We plan to utilize technological tools and advancements as much as relevant and necessary both in and out of classrooms, with the purpose of making the program more accessible and inclusive. Besides the licensable program development, we plan to develop a series of online, enterprise education program, available for everyone.