BernhardHofer
Country, Date of election
Austria 2015
Field
Education
Bernhard Hofer creates a peer-to-peer business, through which students help each other to achieve their full potential.
Problem
Tutoring in Austria is mainly carried out by experts, only 5% of it is led by students themselves. The expert tutoring industry is a multi-million business, but still, 100,000 households in Austria cannot afford tutoring.
Impact
Bernhard changes this industry by empowering students to help themselves – he turns the expert business into a peer-to-peer business. Talentify.me supports cross-school learning between students, promotes talent and offers exciting workshops.
Idea
Bernhard has developed an incredible online and offline matchmaking process that connects students, enables peer-to-peer tutoring, and builds bridges between students and future employers. Bernhard underpins his initiative with an extraordinary social business model that allows him to act sustainable. Talentify works together with well-known companies, who for example give them financial support. In return, the students can have an internship at these companies, leading to potential future employment at these companies.
Vision
Bernhard´s goal is to reach 10-20% of all Austrian students, and form a mutual-support community of more than 150,000 students in the long run. 150,000 youth from all backgrounds – privileged and non-privileged – forming a community supporting each other to accomplish challenges at school, to explore what they want to do in life, to build bridges with the society around them, and to find their first job.
Motivation
Bernhard tries to remove the disadvantage of socially disadvantaged families who often can’t afford tutoring for their children. On average, a tutoring lesson in Austria costs 30 euros. At the age of 18, together with school colleagues, Bernhard started their junior company “Easy Learning” in order to oppose this big injustice. For just 8 euros per hour, “Easy Learning” provided peer-to-peer tutoring, where students help other students to understand specific subjects.
