Would you dare to start a business with just 100,000 VND?
A five-day transformational journey for future leaders begins with what seems like an impossible challenge. How will 70 selected middle and high school students from across Hai Phong rise to it?
No worries — they will be guided every step of the way by the coaches and mentors of the D-Leader Summer Camp!
At this morning’s D-Leader Summer Camp Opening Ceremony, the leaders of these future “start-up companies” chose between two pathways: Social Enterprise Projects and Community Service Projects. Under the guidance of experienced lecturers and industry practitioners, each team will design a real product and experience the full entrepreneurial journey from A to Z: planning, fundraising, launching, calculating profits and losses, and creating meaningful value for the community. More than just receiving “seed capital,” students are being entrusted with something even more valuable: belief and opportunity. An opportunity to become more mature, more confident, more courageous, and more capable of turning ideas into action. The true “returns” they gain from this experience go far beyond financial outcomes — they include knowledge, resilience, leadership thinking, and a stronger version of themselves.
If start-ups have angel investors, D-Leader participants have six “knowledge investors”: four coaches including PhDs, lecturers, CEOs, and industry experts, alongside two homeroom mentors who hold master’s degrees or international academic backgrounds and bring 8–10 years of experience in project management and leadership.
But does starting a project automatically make someone a leader? The answer is no. The five-day D-Leader journey goes much deeper. Throughout the camp, students will “collect” the essential competencies of leadership and gradually build their own personal portfolios. This is a journey of discovering strengths, strengthening inner capacity, and developing the skills needed to become individuals who can create positive impact within their communities. 💬 “For the first time, I was given a difficult challenge, yet I felt excited to take it on and eager to come up with creative ideas,” shared Duc Minh.
The personal portfolio they build together with the tangible products they create throughout D-Leader will become a valuable advantage in future university applications, helping them stand out before admissions committees at prestigious universities, just as Dewey Hai Phong’s Grade 12 students have done on their journey to some of the world’s leading institutions.
We invite parents to look back at these first moments as D-Leader participants stepped beyond their comfort zones this morning, and to stay tuned as their “businesses” and personal portfolios take shape in the days ahead!
