2017 YES! Award Goes to Student 2017 YES! Award Goes to Student Team from BBS Wirtschaft 1 Ludwigshafen

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Daniel Günther, Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein, announced the winners of the German economics competition YES! – Young Economic Summit 2017: The student team from BBS Wirtschaft 1 Ludwigshafen won the vote for the best solution and brought home the 2017 YES! Award.

On 28 and 29 September 2017, around 200 high school students and an additional 200 guests attended the third YES! – Young Economic Summit in Kiel. YES! is the biggest economics competition for high school students in Germany. Distinguishing itself from a total of 13 schools from Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein, the student team of BBS Wirtschaft 1 Ludwigshafen came top in the vote for their idea of a „company gateway“ for start-ups.

„Our idea of a ‘company gateway’ aims to boost the start-up economy in Germany as well as to support innovative new firms,“ explains the winning team from BBS Wirtschaft 1 Ludwigshafen. „The founding of new businesses is the key to sustainable growth in Germany. In order to get there, however, comprehensive changes are needed,“ says team member Adrian Roth.

Over the course of more than six months, the student team developed its solution with the help of economic experts from the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim. The YES! team of BBS Wirtschaft 1 Ludwigshafen is composed of Adrian Roth, Benjamin Döring, Felix Degen, Felix Mutter, Lukas Dissinger as well as their teacher Thorsten Galm, who supported the students in the competition. An official award ceremony will take place on 8 November at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Berlin, patron of the YES! programme.

More information on the company gateway for start-ups

In second place came the team from Richard-Hallmann-Schule Trappenkamp in Schleswig-Holstein. The team was able to win the votes of their fellow students with their idea of „MatchEd“, a practice-oriented solution for an innovative education platform, which prepares students to overcome the challenges of digitalisation. The third place went to the team of Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium in Hamburg, who tackled the problem of how to encourage sustainable consumption and developed the idea of a „sustainability kit“ for schools.

Minister President Daniel Günther said to the YES! teams: „Everyone who took part today is a winner. You all took on the challenge of finding solutions for some of the most urgent problems of our time – and in English too, a language that is not your native tongue. Your dedication and commitment has been exemplary. I would like to thank you all for taking part.“