The project of the academic year 2005-2006 was based on the idea that many entrepreneurs are having problems with starting their own business. After conducting a research (www.nibud.nl) we discovered that especially young women from vocational schools are likely to have high debts in the future, for they often have not enough knowledge of how to be a successful entrepreneur. We decided to target our project at the group of students who are 16 to 20 years old and in beauty care education, because most of them will at least try to start their own business in the near future. However, they do not learn any financial skills during their study.

The goal of our project was to make vocational students of the Alfa College (Groningen) aware of their financial situation and to give them advice on how to start a business. Our project, executed in May 2006, consisted of two lectures and one workshop.

The first lecture was given by Mr. Stein, the CEO of Medex, an international company in beauty products. We are glad that Mr. Stein shared his experience in starting a business in the beauty industry, as he certainly knows a lot about the financial and marketing aspects of starting one's own business and is very capable of teaching this in an interesting and enthusiastic way. With his lecture, we reached an audience of almost 80 students.

The second lecture was given by Mrs. Lameijer, a beauty specialist. She described her own experiences in starting a beauty salon and spoke about business ethics and best ways to stay in line with new developments in the beauty industry.

The last part of our project was a workshop, in which the students practiced the theory just learned in the lectures, by writing some features of a business plan. In cooperation with drs. G. Löhlefink (business consultant at Atos Origin) we reviewed these business plans, and the best student got an award sponsored by Medex!

Medex: This is the company of Mr. Stein, the first speaker

Kamer van Koophandel: Here you can find interesting data about beauty salons in Groningen.