Olympic challenge for enterprising students

The winning team with their mentor Victoria Brierley and Chair of the Dragon's panel Gavin Reynolds

Budding young entrepreneurs from across Rochdale were given the chance to showcase their business skills to local business leaders recently.

The Rochdale Young Entrepreneur Challenge 2011 brought together 70 Year 10 pupils from six schools across the borough.

Working in teams of seven, their challenge was to create a food business to be based at one the 2012 Olympic Villages - and to present their ideas to a Dragons’ Den-style panel of local business people.
 
Using the Olympic theme as the basis for their food business, the teams of students worked with a business mentor to develop a pitch covering the name and venue for the business, the food to be served, the customers it would be aimed at, and the costs of the enterprise.
 
Gavin Reynolds, from Recruitment Solutions North West, chaired the panel which heard the team’s pitches.
 
He said: “We were very impressed by the ideas we heard. The teams were all of a very high standard and events like this give young people a really good insight into life to come. I would definitely expect to see some good careers developing on the back on this.”
 
The winning team was mentored by Victoria Brierley from the Deckers Group.
 
She said: “My team generated some excellent ideas. They were enthusiastic and, despite not knowing each other, really gelled as a team. Their awareness of environmental issues was particularly impressive and led to long discussions about restaurant design.”
 
Participant Jack Adcock from Oulder Hill School said: “I thought the day was a great idea as we had a chance to work with people from other schools and backgrounds that we wouldn’t usually work with. I have learnt how to co-operate and work well with others to create a good idea and pitch.”
 
And Anusia Battersby from Beech House said: “We thoroughly enjoyed pitching our ideas to the ‘dragons’ even if we did forgot to tell them our team name!”
 
The schools which took part were Redwood, Oulder Hill Community School, Siddal Moore Sports College, Hollingworth Business and Enterprise College, Kingsway Park High School and Beech House.