Harrogate High School was selected to this year host the annual Young Enterprise training event for the Yorkshire and Humber region. Twelve schools from across the area attended to gain valuable tips on making their new found business a success.
Young Enterprise encourages students to set up a business and run it effectively within their Sixth Form school curriculum. Each business is made up of members holding positions such as finance manager, marketing manager, production manager and the overall managing director. Students have to produce a product with help from a link teacher and business advisors and then go on to sell it at trade fairs. All this work ends at an end of year awards ceremony where awards are given out such as ‘best trade stand’ and ‘best product’.
At the training event, guest speakers from Yorkshire businesses gave their words of wisdom to the students. The speakers were; Steve Parsley from Montpellier Media, Paul Marsh from GSPK Design & Chair of the YE volunteer board North Yorkshire, Martin Miles of Gluetogether, Steve Nicholls from North Yorkshire Print & Design and Stuart Johnson, owner of Business Mentoring Yorkshire.
Representatives from Lunae Lux, last year’s company from Harrogate High who won awards such as ‘Best Trade Stand’ also attended to give the new companies some advice.
The students from each school will now go on to develop their product, trade stand, business image and presentation skills ready for the trade fair season.
Managing Director Abi Barton of Harrogate High Schools company ‘Evolve’ said “The event has given my team plenty of ideas to discuss at our next meeting. There are ways we can improve our products and our displays that will enable to move forward in preparation for the competitions”.
Harrogate High School link teacher Karen Naylor said: This was a fantastic event for many of the Young Enterprise Companies that are running this year. The event itself gave all the companies that attended a great deal to think about. This was down to the inspirational speakers that presented and the networking that students were able to do. I am sure all the students that attended this event will have taken away plenty of advice and guidance and they will be planning for North Yorkshire competitions.
Jill Tinsley the Manager of Young Enterprise said: It was great to see so many budding entrepreneurs at Harrogate High. This year is a record for the number of Young Enterprise companies that are entering the Best Young Enterprise Company competition in North Yorkshire. The standards are extremely high and there is some stiff competition. It was great to see how well the companies are doing since their launch in September and let’s hope with the help of the experts they heard from that they continue to go from strength to strength. Fingers crossed we will see a Young Enterprise company from North Yorkshire go all the way to National Finals!
