Economy and Innovation

As an Entrepreneurial, Innovative city, Lisboa fosters the teaching of entrepreneurship at secondary schools. It is sought to ensure that youths receive adequate education and training, as entrepreneurship is clearly perceived as a skill whose building and development is essential to ensuring quantitative and qualitative business growth.

The Lisboa City Council considers it essential to establish a network in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship, in order to encourage talent, support innovative ideas and allow for a better insight into current economic issues and competitiveness.

In addition to the Participative School Budget project, the Lisboa City Council established a partnership with JAP - Junior Achievement Portugal for the implementation of the Youth Entrepreneurship Programme.

The municipality has been developing a series of projects that aim to promote education in citizenship and encourage school-aged children and adolescents to engage in civic responsibility and participate actively in community issues. In this sense, the partnership between Lisboa City Council and Junior Achievement Portugal, established in 2011/2012, seeks to promote education for entrepreneurship.

Approximately 22,000 children and youths from about 163 schools in Lisboa participated in this initiative over the last 6 years.

In addition to this partnership with JAP, CML developed the “JUNIOR CODE ACADEMY”, which started functioning in the 2014/2015 schoolyear, with a view to teaching programming/code to children and youths at several schools in the municipality of Lisboa.

Following a review of the protocol signed in the first year of programme implementation, during which the CML/JAP partnership focused on the implementation of 4 programmes aimed at primary and secondary school students (“The Family”, “The Community”, “Economics for Success” and “The Company”), JAP and CML decided to expand their scope of educational offerings. Schools were also invited to participate in the implementation of the “Europe and I” and “It’s My Business” programmes, aimed at students in Years 5-8.