Congratulations to our team of six Year 11 students who received an award for the 'Start Up Company of the Year' at the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) Awards held at the Auckland University of Technology last week.

The Young Enterprise Scheme is a unique learning experience for senior secondary school students to form a company, become directors, and develop products and services which they market then and go on to sell. It teaches skills in budgeting, planning, interpersonal relations, decision making, reporting, communications, risk management and teamwork. Students within each team take on specific business roles and responsibilities from finance to sales, marketing and production. At our College, whilst mentored by staff, all work towards the YES business is done in the students’ own time as an extension to their College studies.

As the youngest entered in the competition, the team comprising Callum Lee, Andrew Chen (Managing Director), Joshua Ng, Ivy Liu, Daniel Mar and Akshay Mor, and mentored by Mrs Val Little, found the venture challenging but were proud of their results, a culmination of a year’s worth of work.

Taking on quite a risk, their business, ‘Just in Case,’ provided phone cases for IPhones 5 and 6, which they imported from China. In line with the resurgence of colouring in for adults, the cases allowed customers to colour their chosen design with felt tip pens to suit themselves. The nature of the material allows the owner to change their colour schemes as often as they might change their clothes.

Once the team had decided on their product, sourced a supplier and undertaken marketing drives to launch and then sell their product, they completed a full Annual Report – which they said really ‘tested the literacy skills of each director!’

The team said, ‘The Young Enterprise Scheme was a valuable experience, providing us with the opportunity to face real setbacks and failures and to learn from them in a safe environment. As a group, we benefited from the practical experience of decision making and team work gained in running our own business, so much so that we all intend to repeat this challenge in 2017, forming a new company with the advantage of experience and skills gained as the only Year 11 team in the 2016 competition.’ 

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