Iniciador Kids is an excellent initiative by Iniciador to tackle the low percentage of students who consider starting a business when they finish their studies.
The first Iniciador Kids camp was held in Cantabria last August, 2011, and was a great success, so the experience had to be repeated on a smaller scale to sow the seeds for next summer.
As I missed this summer’s one, I couldn’t miss #WeCampGredos, so let me tell you about my experience.
The main promoters are Rosa Poo, José Picó and Javier Esteban. With their enthusiasm and effort they are creating a new movement, a new family of people committed to imagination, innovation, enthusiasm, fun, effort and teamwork – some of the aspects and values you’ll put into practice at these camps.
The setting was simply stunning: the heart of the Sierra de Gredos, at Gredos Center in Navarredonda de Gredos.
An amazing house all to ourselves: 4 rooms with 8 bunk beds, a couple of suites and a cabin. A bright common room for games, reading and talks, a dining room with wooden benches, a giant kitchen and, outside, a football pitch, a weather station, an open-air classroom and a giant cabin with three classrooms for arts and crafts.
The best thing about Gredos Center was our friend, host and leader of the pack, Sebastián. With his cry of “eo, eo, oé!!” everyone paid attention to him. He looked after us wonderfully, he was on top of everything, learnt our names in 15 minutes, showed us every corner of the house, served us breakfast, lunch and dinner… a star.
The practical part, the workshops, led by two experts:
Fabian Pedrero, from Contoplanet. He got the children exercising their minds and their imagination, thinking about impossible things that in the end turn out to be possible. He had them think about how the story of Alice in Wonderland might continue, and the result was hilarious.
Fernando Moreno, from ICSW.com. The first thing he asked the kids was: “When you grow up, do you want to be bored or do you want to have fun?” That’s the difference between working as an employee and being an entrepreneur, working at what you love most. He told them several stories from his life, his first projects, failures and successes, and they listened very attentively. He got them working as a team and coming up with 4 new companies based on their hobbies, all 4 of them completely viable.
The leisure part:
Endless football matches, helped by the good weather, races along the corridors and around the house…
A visit to the nature classroom of the Gredos Regional Park, in Hoyos del Espino. We discovered how the mountains were formed thousands of years ago, and their endemic species.
At Gredos Center, with Sebastián, we learnt how a weather station works – the anemometer, the rain gauge and so on. All we were missing was @digitalmeteo.
We looked at the stars through the telescope in the house, and we could see Jupiter.
Saturday Night: a mini disco for the little ones. One of the dads has a split personality and at night turns into @DJ_Flexi, so he put up coloured lights, brought out some Fanta and crisps, and plugged in some speakers with Spotify at full blast playing the kids’ favourite songs. We grown-ups also had our gin and tonic moment, thanks to our barman @javimonsalupe.
Networking for all ages:
The little ones hit it off straight away, and in just two days they got to know each other better, had fun and formed their little groups to work together, yet absolutely all of them mixed, even with very different ages.
We parents also took the opportunity to get to know each other better – what we do day to day, our projects – and we’ll certainly see each other again thanks to this excellent experience.
So if you’re an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur and you don’t want your children to become civil servants or employees, stimulate their imagination, their creativity and the itch to start a company at Iniciador Kids.
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