The startup.business Entrepreneurial Learning in Action program was turned into a case study and submitted to the Australian Government for Australia’s 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals Voluntary National Review. The case study was acknowledged for its work towards Goal 4: Quality education.

Through its programs in partnership with AgriFutures Australia in regional and rural Australia, startup.business has also been able to impact the following goals for sustained impact on communities and industry. Specifically:

4 Quality education: Teach young people the skills needed for future work. The program developed students’ capacity for the top ten skills outlined by the World Economic Forum as being the most important for future work: complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, judgement and decision making, service orientation, negotiation, and cognitive flexibility.

8 Decent work and economic growth: Empowering young people to impact the world through entrepreneurship. Providing knowledge about career opportunities in industry, entrepreneurship and education. Students were exposed to Agriculture as a career option, with 36% saying they were more likely to consider working in Agriculture at the end of the program.

9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure: Encouraging young people to be innovators by educating and promoting ways of solving problems across industries through entrepreneurial thinking. Students identified local problems on their own to solve and 33% of the 74 business ideas generated by students impacted this Sustainable Development Goal.

10 Reduced inequalities: The program provided access to entrepreneurial ways of thinking and learning to seven schools and a total of 130 students in rural and regional areas.

11 Sustainable cities and communities: The program created communities of practice by connecting young people with 23 industry and educational experts to solve global and local issues in Agriculture.

17 Partnerships for the goals: Working with government, industry and educational experts to reform state and national curricula with a focus on skills and dispositions. The national pitch competition final, held during the Brilliant Business Kids Festival and attended by students, teachers and parents from the program was endorsed, supported and attended by government and academia, as well as industry and innovation leaders from CSIRO, Optus, Westpac, JobGetter, Global Citizen, AgCrowd, Outback Wings, Ag Bootcamps and Jobs for NSW. Also presenting was Dr Phil Lambert PSM, lead curriculum expert to the OECD’s Education 2030 project, Adjunct Professor The University of Sydney, Fellow of the Australian College of Educators & the Australian Council for Educational Leaders. NSW President of the Australian College of Educators (ACE), Chair of the National Council and a member of the ACE Board.