Connecting classrooms with career opportunities

The Education Empowerment Project aims to inspire and educate students at Kungsholmens Västra Gymnasium about business and entrepreneurship, encouraging them to pursue higher education. The program includes three components: Business cases, Scholarships and Mentorships.

Filip Lodding Bondy, Legal Counsel and Gustav Martinsson, Senior Associate at Altor, have both been involved in the initiative from the start. We interviewed them to understand what sparked the idea of starting an education project with a high school in Sweden, and the learnings so far.

What inspired the launch of the Education Empowerment project with Kungsholmens Västra Gymnasium?

Filip: Some people have difficulty finding their way in society, partly because of poor education. There are many reasons why these types of challenges arise, but I think a big problem is segregation. And that is obviously a very difficult problem to tackle.

Then a few years ago, I was at a dinner with the law firm Vinge. They told me about a charity program they do, which aims to broaden the legal profession by engaging with high schools, offering them scholarships, educational sessions, and opportunities to explore legal careers through internships. Together with Gustav, we started talking about whether it would be possible for us at Altor to start our own initiative leveraging our portfolio companies and providing a broad spectrum of internships, case studies, and collaborations between high school students and the companies.

Gustav: We got connected with Kungsholmen Västra Gymnasium which turned out to be a great match for our project. The school fits the overall demographic we were looking for, and it also has a supportive and enthusiastic management team that makes collaboration very easy.

 

 

What have you learned so far?

Gustav: It has been fantastic to learn and experience how we can leverage our role from a societal perspective. Our reach goes well beyond Altor and our community of companies, advisors and experts and the many people we impact in our daily operations.

We can collaborate with our companies beyond just being an active owner from a financial perspective. This collaboration has been so powerful, and we are only starting to understand the opportunities for the impact we can unlock.

What are you aiming for with this project?

Filip: I think there is value in meeting these young adults, and showing that we care about their future and we want them to succeed. It is not only about identifying and providing scholarships. It is also about inspiring everyone in the classroom.

One of the biggest problems with segregation, here in Sweden at least, is that many of these young adults do not feel that they are seen by the rest of society. I am not saying that our program will change everything, but to me, it has an impact. We can open our platform and network to these students, provide new opportunities, and hopefully, that makes a difference.