GBHS business students sold on SELL programme
Winning team Spoonit with judges, officials and organisers after the SELL workshop last week. Photo: Neil Wilson.
About 80 Year 10 and 11 students at Golden Bay High School took part in a Dragon’s Den-like experience last week. As the culmination of a three-day practical business education workshop they had to “sell” their virtual companies to a panel of high-powered judges, who selected a winning team.
The workshop was run by the Student Enterprise Learning Link (SELL) and it is administered by the Young Enterprise Trust. Ewan McLeod, the national director for SELL, was in Takaka last week to oversee the programme along with executive assistant, Caroline Steele.
“There’s a great deal of goodwill out there in the business community,” said Ewan. “SELL depends on the generosity of sponsors who donate up to $400,000 to allow us to deliver the programme to about 60 schools a year. We also rely on principals with the vision to see the benefits of this workshop for their students and the teaching staff to arrange our visit to the school. The success of the workshop is then up to the kids who, unlike most adults, have no boundaries to their innovative thinking and brainstorming.”
In the process of setting up their companies, the students had to research and devise a product, write a business plan and consider other aspects of their business, like technology, production and marketing.
Gina Udell, the marketing director of the winning company, Spoonit, said that the SELL workshop taught things like teamwork, planning and how to present yourself to others.
“It’s been great,” said Gina. “In my job as marketing director I had to become more of a people person, which wasn’t too hard. We were told that the judges would be looking at the ways we met them and introduced ourselves and our product. We had to shake hands properly and look people in the eye and things like that. It was an important part of our company’s performance. We were out of class for those three days but we were learning lots.”
The judges were Cr Stuart Borlase, MP Damien O’Connor, Tony Reilly, Nikki Ryan and Karen Savage, prominent business people in our community. They said that they had been impressed with the programme, the companies and their products and with the students themselves.
“It kind of restores your faith in young people,” said Cr Borlase. “You hear so much about disaffected youth and so on and then you meet these impressive young people. There are some real stars of the future amongst them.”
“I liked the programme,” said Mr Reilly. “It’s great to see business and competition and success being taught in a hands-on way.”
Golden Bay High School economics teacher and SELL co-ordinator Justine Butler also said that the programme had been a great success.
“We were lucky to be able to be included in the programme,” said Ms Butler. “I hope we can do it again in the future.”
Neil Wilson
