Cap'Ten is a pedagogical tool aiming at the encouragement and support of 10 to 13 years old students to undertake a personal project. This method includes a pedagogical material helping young people to work on their project as autonomous  as possible.

Cap'Ten is a training support material to help pupils developping their own project.

Cap'Ten's program targets pupils between 10 and 13 years old, this mostly means chidren enrolled in the last two years  of primary school and, to a less extent,  students in the early stage of secondary school, especially those have difficulties in traditional education.

Aim : To contribute to the change of mentality of young people and encourage their entrepreneurial spirit, it is necessary to begin as soon as possible. The authors of Cap'Ten are deeply convinced that entrepreneurship spirit is made of behaviours that can be stimulated in the early age. Cap'Ten develops skills like curiosity, creativity, organization, autonomy, initiative, team spirit… so that Cap'Ten is in agreement with this aim of The Oslo Agenda for Entrepreneuriship Education :"Introduce innovative pedagogies into all courses, as a necessary basis for building an entrepreneurial spirit".

Cap'Ten is a program that induces children to be the actor of their own learning practice. In doing so, they favour attitudes that support children to be more proactive about their life and their action on their environnement.
 
Cap'ten pursues 4 particular objectives:
- To develop the entrepreneurial spirit of young people, regardless their socio-economical background.
- To continuously stimulate their natural creativity. Indeed, too often, their natural creativity and sense of innovation is inhibited by the school system. In that respect, Cap'Ten's program helps each child in getting the possibility of developing its own creative talents.
- To revalorize technical and artisan professions. Cap'Ten's program offers the opportunity for children facing difficulties in the traditional school system to experience an other way to discover their own skills and to choose their future carreer orientation.
- To bring a pedagogical support to teachers that are interested in developping entrepreneurial practices with their pupils

Approach and tools: Cap'Ten is a simple, ludic, complete and flexible method that offers pedagogical support dedicated to teachers that want to nurture the entrepreneurial behaviour of their pupils, and to young pupils by helping them in chosing and realizing their own project. The tools are colored, amusing and federated by the presence of Zurk, the mascot ant.
The duration of Cap'Ten is flexible (between 10 and 24 weeks, at a pace of 1 or 2 school periods by week) and depends on the pedagogical choices of the teacher. To allow each pupil to enjoy each stage, the duration of the action should not be shorter than 10 weeks. Therefore, teachers should consider to begin the project as early as possible in the school year.
Thanks to the tools, guided by Zurk, pupils manage their project either individually or in small teams, in the classroom and/or outside school, with or without the sponsorship of an adult. Depending of the teacher decision, this is taking place either within a thematic framework or in a total freedom.

The project takes place in two steps:
1) Discovering the method:
- Each pupil will receive by mail an invitation by the teacher to pick up a toolbox at school.
- Pupils then learn about the project by reading or listening to the story of Zurk, that gets its fist mission for the ants colony: finding food for the colony…
- To discover the meaning of entrepreneurial behaviours, Cap'Ten proposes the "Skills game".
2) Doing the project:
- The pupil takes up the challenge, and chooses a theme around which he/she wants to build his/her project.
- To finish the project, the pupil will work through 7 specific stages. At each stage, the pupil can use 3 different tools to sollicit help:
o Passage plan: with this tool, the pupil can see what steps he has to take in order to proceed with his project.
o The Ant's Guidebook: a manual with practical tips and advices for the pupil.
o Evaluation Mirror: a tool of self evaluation for the pupil.

Each participating pupil receives an individual toolkit and is guided by Zurk, the mascot, throughout the duration of the project. Each participating teacher receives a toolkit including a teaching book and a CD.

Cap'Ten is born in the French speaking part of Belgium in 2003 by an initiative of ICHEC-PME. It began with a pilot phase. The launching in the schools of that region took place in October 2004. Cap'Ten reached, for his first edition, 25 % of the target population. Between 2004 and 2009, 50000 children have taken part in the Cap'Ten project. In 2008, about 2,500 children in the Flemish area of Belgium participated in a pilot phase. Today Cap'Ten in Flanders is still a limited edition, fully based on private founding. To be able to satisfy all schools that wish to participate, Cap'Ten needs public funding. Cap'Ten experienced its first international success in 2007 by winning the "European Enterprises Award" in the category "Investment in People", an initiative of the European Commission. Currently, Cap'Ten is running in a pilot phase in France, and is discussing with partners in Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Italy and the United States to see if pilot projects can be implemented in these regions.

Based on the evaluations of the participating people, the reactions of the teachers are enthusiastic: Cap'Ten is considered as a very efficient tool to develop projects and to validate which competences are acquired by their pupils.
Cap'Ten experience shows that this kind of projects:
- Is particularly effective with children coming from a weaker social environment;
- gives each child the chance to develop its own creative talents at the fullest;
- gives pupils an extra boost of self-confidence and motivation.

 

Some strengths of the program:
- enhances individual skills: manual, sportive, artistic… skills
- gives every child a project within his reach
- contributes to stimulate entrepreneurship mindset
- fits all children, whatever the school level or the socio-economical environment
- fits children not at ease with national languages
- empowers children as actors of their training.