In 2012, talent scout pioneer Suat Yılmaz became the first talent scout from a German university to go to schools in the northern Ruhr region to work with teachers to discover talented young people, mainly from non-academic families, and to accompany, advise and inform them about their future plans.

Talent scouting began as a temporary project. After two expansions - from Gelsenkirchen to the Ruhr region and later to all of North Rhine-Westphalia - it has now become a permanent infrastructure in NRW thanks to the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Science. Currently, 70 talent scouts accompany a good 20,000 students at almost 400 secondary schools throughout the state. Since the start of talent scouting, more than 35,000 talents have been supported.

To mark this occasion, the anniversary celebration "10 Years of NRW Talent Scouting" of the NRW Center for Talent Development of the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences took place on Friday, October 21, 2022. Almost 400 participants from schools, universities, politics, business and science celebrated the anniversary in Gelsenkirchen's Hans-Sachs-Haus with a two-hour stage program. True to the motto "Talent goes first," the focus here was on talent. But representatives from schools and universities also had their say. NRW Minister of Science Ina Brandes also attended the anniversary celebration. She was delighted with the development of NRW Talent Scouting to date and announced the further expansion of the program.

For more information on the event, please visit the website of the NRW Center for Talent Development.

Link to the website.