International Horizons is celebrating its one year anniversary! So here we are: first candle to blow out today. Ok, the project is older, but legally, today is the first anniversary of our young start-up!
International Horizons, where does it come from?
Besides meeting a cleaning lady and a receptionist in Quimiac en Mesquer, – BigUp in Vatel, at the Relais Marine, and long live 2009! – the idea was born a few years later, at the beginning of 2016, after reading an essay by Jeremy Rifkin “the new society of zero marginal cost”. In simple terms, we wanted to create a mix between an agency and a startup, for the placement of trainees in France and abroad, adding a whole social component: breaking market prices to give back purchasing power to students, breaking the pecuniary elitism and improving the quality of services. The agency part was born: International Horizons.
… Some adventures!
We have had a few: driving on the left in Cyprus and missing to crash into a truck, but also sleeping in a small house where the keys had been exchanged for cockroaches, driving on the wrong road and driving through the Slovenian Alps at night, without GPS and avoiding a beautiful doe on the side of the road, renting a car that refuses to accelerate once on the motorway, missing to be beaten up by charming Poles in disguise (or not!). ) as Nazis during Independence Day, screwing up a Brussels-Lille because of an – excellent – bowl of rāmen, having money stolen out of one’s hand in Bristol or having to escape from a guest house without electricity in the UK, guarded by a well-behaved boss in Manchester.
Setting up a business is a lot of adventure, but fortunately you are here, again and again, to help us!
Thank you!
Thanks to Yann (our accountant), Loïc (our banker) and Bruno (our lawyer). Thank you to the elected representatives of the Lorient area who helped us to launch this project, especially Gaël and his friend Janick. Thanks to the CCI (Elsa, Jacques and Loïc!) and Audelor (Arnaud) for your support! Unfortunately, we can’t thank the very dense sphere of people who helped us, or helped us on a daily basis, but we have today even more than the other days, a thought for you : Anne, Philippe, Corinne, Pierre, Florence, Xavier, Maire-Laure, Julien, Mariannick, Eric, Roselyne, Jérôme, Marie, Guillaume, and all the others!
And today, what is International Horizons in the end?
It’s an agency that places trainees all over Europe, Senegal, Australia, Taiwan, Mexico and a newly opened destination: Mauritius! Next year, China and Azerbaijan will join the internship destinations abroad! International Horizons is also a network of about a hundred schools in France, Slovenia, Poland, Cyprus, United Kingdom, Lithuania and many others! It is also 4 competitions won, an application in the making, 4 websites, a European project and two others to come, social support for local missions, participation in the development of the French Tech of Morbihan, and still other projects to come for a second year that promises to be just as intense as the first!
Thanks to Marie, Claire, Zénaïs, Justine (the submarine) Ophélia, Anaëlle, Kérène, Julien, Tristan, for their good mood and their daily work during their internship. A HUGE thank you to Nada for his daily involvement in Milan and to Théo who joined the Team as an apprentice!
We don’t give up, we continue, we have fun, we enjoy ourselves!
If you want to read more, go there 😉