Impact of business engineering and service-learning methodology on youth development in Peru

Abstract

In Peru, youth currently face a series of challenges stemming from global trends that impact diverse areas, including the social, cultural, and economic spheres. However, among the most significant problems are social violence, limited access to and quality of education, family conflicts, economic insecurity, and a lack of job opportunities. These conditions create an environment that hinders motivation and fosters feelings of low self-esteem, mistrust, and uncertainty, restricting young people's ability to face everyday challenges and limiting their personal and professional development.

This situation leads to discontent within their social environment, as the lack of access to educational opportunities, mainly due to marginalization and economic hardship, excludes a significant percentage of the population from the higher education system.

Faced with this problem, one of the greatest challenges is to promote training programs among public and private organizations, universities, and the government. Therefore, the project "School for Successful Young Entrepreneurial Leaders" is being developed to generate experiences of solidarity through action. Its mission is to create transformative potential in young people based on four dimensions: empowerment, leadership, entrepreneurship, and transformative potential. It involves engaging them in important and decisive experiences for their personal development, ensuring a new generation of change with social responsibility.

The project focused on promoting cultural and academic values ​​and practices, with the goal of strengthening knowledge, competencies, and personal skills that foster empowerment and the capacity for effective performance in activities, roles, and functions associated with leadership and entrepreneurship as a source of sustainability.

In this regard, the development of a service-learning methodology was proposed. This strategy is designed to promote and encourage participation, "uniting experience-based learning, curricular content, and social commitment, allowing students to be active participants by engaging in the real needs of their environment with the goal of improving their lives," thus integrating the university, community, society, and stakeholders. This, in turn, empowered students in this branch of engineering, strengthening their learning process by solving real-world problems.

These experiences demonstrated the positive impact of project-based learning and service-learning in strengthening environmental awareness, social responsibility, and teamwork. They concluded that the success of these programs laid the foundation for their expansion and the integration of new community stakeholders, thus promoting a more engaged and participatory citizenry.