Río Piedras students win global entrepreneurship competition
A group of 13 students from the Nuestra Señora del Carmen School in Río Piedras won first place in the British English Olympics world-class competition, the BEO Challenge, after competing against another 40 schools from around the world, Sacred Heart University announced.
This competition, sponsored by the Oxford International Education Group, fosters academic excellence by allowing the best international students to demonstrate their leadership and knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship.
This year, the participants had to develop an application with social value, which would contribute to the well-being and resilience of the assigned demographic. In the case of the Puerto Rican students, they had to create an application for teachers.
“These young people are an example of persistence in times of uncertainty. The BEO Challenge should be a face-to-face competition but, due to the pandemic, it was held virtually,” said Yesenia Ramos, principal of the Nuestra Señora del Carmen School.
“This did not dampen the desire of our students to compete and give it their best,” she said.
The students took first place after presenting their entrepreneurial idea about using technology to help people manage social distancing. In their case, they developed an application focused on improving and facilitating teacher assignments during the global emergency caused by the pandemic.
The app gives instructors a better virtual experience by taking into consideration communication, organization, and tools to ease the transition from face-to-face instruction to online courses.
To prepare for this competition, the students spent three months attending mentoring workshops on creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and presentation at the Sacred Heart University’s Collaborative Innovation Center-Neeuko.
This is the second world-class competition that the Nuestra Señora del Carmen students win. In 2019, they participated in the World English Experience, claiming the championship after defeating 55 teams from 14 countries.
