The Spark:Her Startup Academy is a bespoke social innovation program that convenes the brightest women from the social, private and public sector with the ambition to change their lives, their community and their world for better. Through experiential learning it equips women with the confidence, skills and community to act upon their passion to address 21st century societal challenges. Most importantly, it challenges them to apply these newly developed skills and knowledge to a real-world challenge provided by a social enterprise. In China today, where you are born determines your educational prospects and therefore life opportunities. Affluent urban centers spend up to five times as much educating students compared to low-income municipalities while early education and foreign language resources are almost unheard of outside of major cities. If education is the key to escaping poverty, then millions of children in China face daunting if not impossible odds. To spark innovations and encourage social entrepreneurship in the field, we are hosting the first Spark:Her Startup Academy focusing on “Innovation in Education in 2014. You might have 10 different ideas how to improve education in China and don’t know which to choose to start up. Or you have the strong desire to improve education but you might not know yet how yet how you can get involved with your skills and expertise. Time: November 14-16th (14th only in the evening) Venue: Bayer Center, No. 27, NorthStreet, East Third Ring Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing (北京朝阳区东三环北路27号拜耳中心 ) More info and Register: http://www.huodongxing.com/go/2014AcaBJ  Trainer: Andrea Lane - Executive Director,  FYSE Andrea founded FYSE in 2008, and grew it into an organization that currently provides support to social entrepreneurs in ten countries in Asia. Across the years, has worked for NGOs and start-ups in the UK, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Malaysia and China. Her focus is on supporting social entrepreneurship by mainstreaming entrepreneurial education, and by supporting social entrepreneurs to start and scale up through effective capacity building. Andrea is driven by the believe that people are the key to solving our current social and environmental challenges and that if provided with the resources, network and skills people will create a more sustainable future. She holds a Master in East Asian Studies from the University of Bristol, England and is an alumni of INSEAD’s International Social Entrepreneur Program. Andrea is the 2012 Winner of the Women Social Leadership Awards (Leaders in the Workplace Category) and was selected as member of the Global Entrepreneurship Forum in 2011.  Guest Speakers: Anna Young - Founder & Executive Director, Ecofroggy Zheng Xiaojie - Founder, Beijing Hong Dan Dan Education and Cultural Exchange Center Cindy Cheng - Curator, Peekabook Library Liu Ming - Project Manager, Save the Children More to come... Languange: English with some Chinese presentations by entrepreneurs. (Translation provided upon need) Organizer: FYSE is on the mission to promote and support entrepreneurship as a powerful driver for job creation, innovation and sustainable economic and social development in developing and emerging markets. We do this by giving social entrepreneurs the education, tools and resources so they can serve their communities with better education, improved health or clean water, while creating jobs for people to strive. Spark:Her is a comprehensive development model to the uniquely support female social entrepreneurs who are not satisfied with leading small enterprises, but who have the ambition and desire to lead high-impact social ventures that have the potential for scale. Under this model, we have Women in Social Enterprise Conference, Spark:Her Startup Academy and Spark:Her Incubator. More information at www.fyse.org.