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12/11/2019 | Pressemitteilung

Prestigious research award for Kassel scientist

How can young people be inspired for entrepreneurship and scientific and technical professions with the help of online courses? This is currently being tested with 20,000 schoolchildren in Ecuador. The University of Kassel is also playing a leading role in the "Showing Life Opportunities" (SLO) project, which has now received a major award.

From left: Dr. Igor Asanov (University of Kassel), Lucia Sanchez (Innovations for Poverty Action), Francisco Flores, M.Sc. (INCHER-Kassel, University of Kassel); Dr. David McKenzie (World Bank).

The idea for the research project was recently honored with the "Path to Scale Award" - this prestigious award in the field of development economics is worth $145,600. It was presented at a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The Path to Scale Award recognizes innovative ideas for addressing barriers to the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries. The award is given to research projects that test these ideas in a new context to examine their effectiveness in addressing poverty on a larger scale.

In the case of the Showing Life Opportunities project, this means taking a training program developed for small business owners in Togo (Campos et al. 2017) and turning it into an online version. Currently, this platform is being tested with 20,000 students in Ecuador.

"The research should not only provide valuable information for developing countries, but also be useful for industrialized countries that want to increase the number of successful entrepreneurs and STEM students," explains Prof. Dr. Bünstorf (Institute of Economics and INCHER-Kassel). Together with colleagues from the World Bank Research Department, Warwick Business School and the Paris universities HEC and ENSAE, Prof. Bünstorf's team is investigating the acceptance and impact of the Spanish-language online education platform.

According to project officials, the award money will help the project (a) implement a mentoring intervention and (b) conduct high-quality follow-up surveys to the initial survey of a student cohort.

The Showing Life Opportunities project, which is being conducted at the International Centre for Higher Education Research Kassel (INCHER-Kassel), involves the following researchers: Dr. Igor Asanov (University of Kassel); Prof. Dr. Thomas Åstebro (HEC Paris); Prof. Dr. Guido Buenstorf (Institute of Economics and INCHER-Kassel; University of Kassel); Prof. Dr. Bruno Crepon (ENSAE and École Polytechnique); Dr. Diego d'Andria (JRC European Commission); Francisco Flores, M.Sc. (University of Kassel); Dr. David McKenzie (World Bank); Dr. Mona Mensmann (Warwick Business School); Prof. Dr. Mathis Schulte (HEC Paris). INCHER-Kassel is implementing the project in collaboration with the Ministry of Education of Ecuador.

Contact person:

Prof. Dr. Guido Bünstorf
Phone: +49 561 804-2961
Mail: buenstorf@uni-kassel.de