Wednesday night sees the final of the Barnsley I Know I Can challenge for 2016.
25 years ago, I was involved as a student in the Young Enterprise Scheme where my team and I made badges, key rings and little animal models from Fimo. How time has flown and now I am here supporting a team in the Barnsley IKIC challenge for the second year.
I am proud to have supported Ellie from Our Small World through the last 8 months, her idea is original for someone of such a tender age being the design of history books for children in Key Stage 2, series one focusses on World War I and II, but she has more in the pipeline.
Many readers have said how educational they are but also fun because of the drawings contained within, again all part of her own design, including the logo.
It’s great to see young people putting themselves out there in what can be a scary environment, primarily in teams but for Ellie it was just her, having initially done a simple business idea / plan submission which won the first level of the competition, followed by a marketing document to demonstrate the brand, target customers and how she found her customers, this part of the competition also being successful.
Last week I joined Ellie just before her pitch to the ‘Dragons Den’ of 3 local business people, selected on the back of the final report demonstrating how the last year had gone, the highs and the lows of the challenge.
Having seen someone who was very shy move into such an arena and present openly (albeit a little nervous), this is an experience anyone should get opportunity to do, the experience benefited me in growing confidence and learning new skills all those years ago, and having read Ellies’ final report it has definitely done the same for her, giving exposure to marketing, copyright, presenting and financial reporting.
Good luck to all the teams involved on Wednesday 15th June, we look forward to seeing you all and your fantastic mentors along with the organisers in what has been another fantastic year for IKIC.
To find out more about the books please follow @OSWseries or for I Know I Can click here
