Last updated: December 2023

Young Wisdom Code of Ethics

Young Wisdom works with schools and universities looking to support next generation startup founders and creative problem solvers who are currently in high school. We work with students from Years 7-12. Occasionally we support upper primary school students in one-off events or short programs.

We are not professionally trained teachers, as we come from a range of professional and entrepreneurial backgrounds. Our work is almost always conducted in collaboration with qualified teachers, who can attend merely to provide supervision or become deeply involved in program delivery.

We have some core beliefs about entrepreneurial education and work with people and institutions that share them, including:

  • No sugarcoating: entrepreneurship is a very difficult career not suitable for everyone; it’s important to share real stories of failure and to celebrate many versions of success.

  • Student agency: students play a key role in shaping their experience of our initiatives; those who wish to launch real startups should be able to apply their learnings in that manner.

  • Regular opportunities: institutions wanting to expose students to entrepreneurship should not stop at one-off events; students with startups will need ongoing support infrastructure.

  • No tech bias: tech startups may seem easier to launch than ever, but they are among the most difficult entrepreneurial ventures in the world; our students can start anywhere.

  • Not limited to ‘wicked problems’: students usually can’t address a global problem on their first venture; we help them think big, but act on any level they feel capable of today.

  • Building ‘soft’ skills: our programs focus on building skills that AI can’t replace and all employers want; empathy, adaptability, communication, teambuilding, selling and more.

What we do for schools:

Sometimes a school will come into contact with us via an initiative we are sponsoring or an event paid for by someone else (e.g. a university partner). We hope you will keep in touch with us and like to be completely transparent in what might happen next:

  • We can continue to make sponsored (e.g. university-paid) opportunities available to you and just keep you posted whenever one is coming up

  • We can meet with you and your school Executive to explore whether there’s the possibility of funding an in-school entrepreneurship program that we can design and deliver with you

    • We are open to various funding models and are always happy to chat possibilities with absolutely no obligation, e.g. school-paid, parent-paid, parent-subsidised, government grant or business sponsorship-subsidised, etc.

  • We may sponsor something you are running if there’s a genuine need; we usually offer an in-kind sponsorship made up of our education and startup support services

We are always grateful for introductions to schools, community organisations, and businesses looking to run or sponsor student-focused entrepreneurial initiatives in case we can assist in any way.

How we work:

  1. We tend to do most of our work face-to-face in schools and universities around Sydney. Almost all of our student-facing work is conducted in the presence of qualified teachers supervising or participating in our initiatives. We will increasingly offer additional online opportunities e.g. public livestreams via YouTube Live with moderated commenting.

  2. All our staff hold valid Working With Children Check numbers, which we verify periodically, and we are always happy to follow additional protocols at the individual school or institution level where they have their own child safety policies or procedures. We currently only operate within NSW, Australia.

  3. Student safety is always top of mind; working with our educator partners, we ensure they are always well-placed to participate effectively without fear or discomfort. We seek and apply advice from educators on how best to support individual students and teams of students, as well as how they approach classroom management in their context.

  4. We avoid group discussions of a personal or sensitive nature (e.g. by not delving into ‘problems’ from students’ personal lives); we may instead focus group conversations on a hobby of theirs and then identify problems and ideate within that scope.

  5. On a 1:1 basis, e.g. through our Entrepreneur In Residence services, conversations may be a little more personal within appropriate bounds (given that the best problems to tackle are usually ones founders personally relate to and/or experience) and any concerns arising from these conversations will be shared with our educator partners promptly.

  6. Sensitive conversations of any school or student-related matters with our educator partners are treated as confidential and not disclosed to other schools or stakeholders beyond our team.

  7. We let our partners lead the promotion of any of our initiatives (e.g. via LinkedIn posts or school newsletters) and will tend to react or share rather than post ourselves; we will always ask before sharing case studies or identifiable student photos through our own channels.

  8. We are a social enterprise in the sense that we donate a significant amount of value per year in the form of in-kind sponsorships at our discretion and the fundamental nature of our work is to build societal capacity for positive change with a purpose over profit mindset. We are however a for-profit Pty Ltd company by definition and plan to grow significantly to achieve our aims on a large scale and in a sustainable manner.

That’s Young Wisdom in a nutshell for now, but we will continue to add to this resource as needed. For any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact me on:

Thanks for reading,

Shahe Momdjian

Director

First published: November 2023