During the World Youth and Student Festival held in October in Sochi, Russia, 100 young people formed teams and tried to run a company.
The city of Sochi, Russia, hosted the 19th World Youth and Student Festival in October, bringing together participants from 185 countries. During the event, 100 young people from 20 countries tested their management skills.
This international event, hosted by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the National Youth Council of Russia, featured several conferences and initiatives simultaneously. One of them involved the Global Management Challenge. For one day, whoever wanted to join or put a team together and run a company could make use of the simulator, just like in the competition in Portugal and the rest of the world.
According to João Matoso Henriques, CEO of SDG, “we were a little apprehensive, not knowing who would turn up, because it is the festival participants who decide what they want to see and do, and if they are interested in following an initiative to the end.” They had 100 young people from around 20 countries, a number that surpassed their expectations. At the end of this process, according to the CEO of SDG, some of them came up to know more about the competition and whether it was possible to integrate it into their countries.
Vyacheslav Shoptenko, of the Russian Global Management Challenge organization, believes that festivals like this are important to help the country expand the competition. In fact, some of the Russian participants expressed an interest in getting involved in the competition at a national level. Russia is currently one of the best international markets for this Portuguese competition and registers around two thousand teams annually. For João Matoso Henriques the youth festival is not only important for promoting this tool across Russia, but for also giving it huge international visibility, considering the 185 countries that were represented here
The youth festival works as a kind of international showcase for this very international Portuguese competition.
