Young Enterprise

Enterprising Youngsters

The Young Enterprise Company Programme is a national competition designed to introduce teenagers to the world of business. Our Year 10 team had the opportunity to set up and run our own real company whilst still at school. Although initially quite difficult, we were guided through the process by our Centre Lead, Mrs Foster, who helped us make tough decisions throughout the competition. The first step on our journey was to find a great product through the masses of ideas from all our team members. In the end, after a couple of false starts, we decided on writing a children’s book. We thought this would be quite easy, as it isn’t too hard to write a story, and the illustrations would take barely any time. We couldn’t have been more wrong! Drafts took a long time to write as many team members had different ideas, and the illustrations were delayed because we only had one illustrator. However, after quickly remembering our Adobe Draw lessons, a couple of team members took on the responsibility of drawing the simpler images. Unfortunately, once the book was almost finished the actual draft of the book was deleted, due to technical difficulties. Devastated but keen to make another quick duplicate, we devoted all of our time as a team to writing the new book, re-drawing the images, and actually developing a newer and better copy in just one week! Our team have really bonded and got to know each other throughout this process, with all of us learning what it is to be a team, to share the ups and downs with each other, and the dedication required. We raised money for the books by having two stalls at Bolton School’s Firework Night, and each team member contributed £15 to the business. The first competition we had was the Bolton and Bury Area Final. Despite half of the teams being older than us, our team pulled through, owing to the many extra hours we spent perfecting our interview and presentation. We won two awards on the day, Best Presentation and Company of the Year, meaning we got through to the next round. The Greater Manchester Area Final was definitely a more nerve-wracking competition because of the incredible products our competitors had devised. However, to our amazement and pride we came Runners Up resulting in our progression to the county finals! Getting through to the North West Finals developed our confidence but again, there were many great products and teams, and only one team could get through to the National Final. Unfortunately, it wasn’t us! However, we won the Disney’s Award for Creativity, so we went home happy. We have won some incredible awards on our journey, including Runners Up in the National Trade Stand Competition. We have also achieved £600+ in profit, but more than that we have made new and close friendships, shared fantastic experiences and developed key teamwork and leadership skills. I would definitely recommend the YE Company Programme to anybody considering it and good luck to next year’s participants!

The Explore Team: Imaan Bhad, Amerleen Hundle, Madihah Jiva, Summer Kay, Sanjanaben Patel, Yuxuan Qu, Katie Schaffel, Fabeha Shafaat, Fizaa Valli & Hui Shan Wen

Receiving the Disney’s Award for Creativity at the North West Finals