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ship education programme that is interdisciplinary and integrates
technology, business and law.
Global EDISON Academy and Global Entrepreneurship Educational
Program
In order to realize the educational goal outlined above, HGU
created Global EDISON Academy (GEA), a new school that
offers bachelor’s degrees in entrepreneurship, allowing students
to co-major in entrepreneurship. It also developed the Global
Entrepreneurship Education Program (GEEP) and Global
Entrepreneurship Training (GET), a one-week intensive training
course in entrepreneurship for future leaders of developing coun-
tries, under the partial financial support of the Korea UNDP and
the Korean Government. HGU has been offering the GET sessions
in developing countries under the auspices of the UNESCO
University Twinning and Networking Programme (UNITWIN)
on capacity-building for sustainable development for develop-
ing countries, of which HGU is the host university. It has been
offering these sessions in cooperation with the UNITWIN partner
universities, whose membership comprises 23 representatives
from 13 countries. Each training session is not a trivial under-
taking – nearly twenty HGU student helpers, along with five or
more professors and staff, travel to the partner country with all
the required supplies and tools/equipment. A number of student
helpers and faculty members join from local partnering schools.
However, the effort has been highly rewarding. So far, five such
sessions have been offered in four different countries, and many
of the graduates have already started companies, at least one of
them with tens of millions of USD in revenue. Many students
regard the session as a life-changing experience.
The last session, GET 10 in East Africa, was held in Nairobi,
Kenya. Taylor University from the US also joined as a partnering
school as part of the North-North leg, and St. Paul’s University
in Kenya as the North-South leg of the North-North-South-South
quadrangular cooperative effort that HGU is pursuing. Also, HGU
opened its first Regional Center for Entrepreneurship Education in
Nairobi, in cooperation with St. Paul’s University, to offer sustained
entrepreneurship education for the East African region in between
the regular GET Sessions as part of the South-South leg of the quad-
rangular cooperative effort.
HGU’s effort to propagate entrepreneurship education
The GET and related activities, especially the North-
South-South triangular and North-North-South-South
quadrangular cooperation that HGU started practising,
are being watched by the UN and world communities
with great interest. In order to expand its network of
cooperation, HGU also joined UN Academic Impact
(UNAI) and is planning a UNAI international experience-
sharing meeting in Korea in the second half of 2011.
Handong Graduate School of Global Entrepreneurship and
Development
HGU is opening Handong Graduate School of Global
Entrepreneurship and Development (HGS GE&D)
with the primary goal of raising highly skilled profes-
sionals for world development among future leaders
in low-income countries who can use entrepreneur-
ship as their main tool. It will offer a Master’s Degree
in Global Entrepreneurship and Development and
provide high-level education in entrepreneurship as
the main tool for capacity-building for sustainable
development.
The future of the fishing rod
HGU believes that the world community should assist
low-income countries by offering entrepreneurship
education specifically targeting future leaders. The
university is convinced that an entrepreneurship educa-
tion will give people the hope, motivation and skills
necessary for the development of their countries on the
basis of their own culture and vision of development.
The traditional approaches for assisting low-income
countries tend to target mainly projects designed and
developed externally, but HGU’s approach is different,
focusing on educating people to be independent and
create their own business opportunities, thus encour-
aging development that is sustainable because it is
endogenous. Going back to the metaphor used above,
this is how HGU provides a fishing rod for long-term
sustainable development.
Image: GET’10 in East Africa
Group for business development. Nine such groups competed and developed
business plans
Classroom lecture. Each day there are four two-hour lectures/seminars
with group workshops in the evening