The European organisation JA Europe, where Johan H. Andresen has been a board member since 2005, enables the 38 sister organisations from across Europe to collaborate closely, including on the development of programs and via various arenas for competitions and networking. JA Europe is Europe’s largest provider of entrepreneurship in educational settings.
Ferd has also set up two national prizes in Norway: one for the youth enterprise with the greatest value creation potential, and the other for Norway’s best student enterprise. The winners are announced at an annual event, and the winner of the best student enterprise also gets the chance to compete in Europe against other countries’ student enterprises to be crowned ‘JA Company of the Year’.
Ferd has also helped put social entrepreneurship on the map in the European school system. Ferd launched an initiative and introduced the term through JA Europe with both Intel and ArcelorMital as partners. The initiative was later discontinued as so many participants in the young enterprise and student business programs gravitated towards social entrepreneurship and long-term solutions on their own initiative, meaning there was no longer a need for a special emphasis on this.
Photo: The agreement that established ‘Stiftelsen Ungdomsbedrifter’ (the Young Enterprise Foundation), dated 15 October 1990. The document was signed by Johan H. Andresen Sr., Edgar Johannesen and Nils Kvandal.