YES Challenge School Info Sessions 2026

The YES Challenge begins where the ideas do, inside the schools.

Across October and November, Park Innovation visits seventeen schools in the Chouf and Iqleem, two rural areas of Mount Lebanon, to run a one-hour session with Grade 11 and 12 students in both the English and French sections.

In that hour students learn what separates a complaint from a business: a real problem, a named customer, a value worth paying for, and a way the idea keeps running after launch day. They meet the five challenge themes, see how last year's teams worked, and form the teams of three to four that will carry them to Pitch Day.

New for 2026, every session includes a crash course in prompt engineering. Students learn how to use AI tools to explore, test and sharpen their own thinking, and where those tools let them down, because the idea has to be theirs.

Each team leaves with a printed A3 business canvas to fill in by hand. Twenty teams are then selected to pitch at Park Innovation on 18 November, with the winners announced at a public celebration on 20 November.

The 2025 edition reached more than 350 students across thirteen schools. The sessions are free, and open to any school in the region that would like to take part.

Format In person, hosted at participating schools
Audience High school students, Grades 10, 11, and 12
Dates October to early November 2026
Location Participating schools across the Chouf and Iqleem, Mount Lebanon, Lebanon