In class, I usually ask students to think about mixing 2 things in order to achieve entrepreneurial and life success. Mix what you love and what you are good at and you will have the drive needed to see you through the process, and the skills to apply once you arrive. So its normal for me to begin by trying to get students to share openly what they feel confident about and perhaps demonstrate a hobby or a talent in a "flash" showcase. In the fall 2012, I announced that I wanted to find talents in the room that might surprise everyone. One young student came forward that he was a rapper. I simply asked for him to come up to the front and freestyle something on the spot. He did and the class went wild with enthusiasm.
Well, it was hard for me not to cherish that moment. Its such a joy for me to see people express their talents and be appreciated. This student was Teo Gudelj. I thought about Teo and how I could help him to have more moments like that. After the class had completed, I tried to write an EU project that could feature his talent for the spoken word and song to reach more young people who had not yet found their calling in life. I sat with a group of colleagues and we came up with a low budget program that would use Youtube to educate through rap song. I still remember lessons from my elementary and high school that used songs to teach, so why not? Well, this EU project did not get funded but the idea was still there so we approached Zagrebacka Banka with a new variation of the idea for another entrepreneurship project they had launched, Moj ZABA Start: Moja Prilika...My Chance.
While it took several months to come together, they did accept and we went into production. We started with our artist, Helena Habdija. She met with me and we discussed the competition which would award 300,000 kuna in cash prize money plus an education and development program for the top 3 winners. After her sketches were done, we passed them over to Teo Gudelj, my promising student with the hip/hop/rapper skills. He turned the sketches into text and submitted the lyrics. The lyrics were then screened by ZABA and with only minor edits were returned. We assembled a team to scout locations and a recording studio to produce the song. The song was produced by 19 year old Mateo Dido in his studio on the island of Ciovo. The collaboration between Teo and Mateo was excellent and some impromptu studio footage was edited into the final music video. The project was all low budget and the goal was to stimulate more buzz about the competition which was announced in June and accepts applications through September 15, 2013. The biggest hurdle was the summer weather as most of Croatia focuses on either working hard or playing hard to support the tourism sector.
The resulting video is a homemade, old school feel and it emphasizes the partners and the process of taking a chance on your own ideas. We also made a subtitled and closed-caption version with a graduate of Slava Raskaj school. Martina Falica is a talented dancer who also happens to be hearing-impaired so she quickly learned the song and came out to the location of ZABA on Maksimirska 86 in Zagreb. This branch of the bank welcomed us to tape some cameo performances by some of their branch office bank tellers and personal bankers. Martina provides some closed caption sequences in the alternative version that can be viewed below.
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