Center-Invest and the Rostov Regional Institute for Teacher Advanced Training and Retraining have announced a competition inviting teachers from the Don region to develop educational materials for a course in “The Principles of Enterprise". The first version of an online textbook will be compiled from the winning entries. It is intended that the textbook will be based on the principles of Web 2.0 and Wikipedia, and that in the future it can be updated not only by teachers, but also by business people.

The project has received the support of the Council for Enterprise of the Administration of the Rostov Region.       

The competition will run from 1 March to 1 September 2010. Entries are to be submitted by 26 May 2010. The winners will be presented with their prizes on 6 September at the Center-Invest Bank head office: three first prizes of 50,000 rubles, ten second prizes of 20,000 rubles and twenty runners-up prizes of 10,000 rubles.

“Just as people today should know their arithmetic: the integers, the rules of arithmetic, and multiplication tables, they should also know how to compare costs and results, they should be familiar with the principles of managing production, marketing, finance and human resources, and they should be able to assess an investment project,” says Chairman of the Board of Directors of Center-Invest Bank, Dr. Vasily Vysokov.  “Current and future generations should know much more besides, but without this fundamental basis, additional knowledge could prove worthless.”

To provide teachers with a good academic grounding in the subject, Center-Invest Bank and specialists from the Rostov Regional Institute for Teacher Advanced Training and Retraining are working on a book for teachers, “Small Business: Enterprise for All for Schoolchildren, Teachers and Parents”, due to be published in May of this year.

Center-Invest already has experience of providing training in basic entrepreneurial skills. In May 2009 we developed training materials and held a series of seminars for the heads of job centres, organisations supporting SMEs, and teachers from Don region higher education institutions.

In October 2009, at the DON SME Forum, we presented the Enterprise for All textbook, developed in partnership with Rostov State Economic University. (http://www.centrinvest.ru/ru/pr/3151, http://www.centrinvest.ru/pdf/pr_vs.pdf).