Young minds face up to the Dragons Den
Jan 13 2010 By Alun Thorne
Five teams of community-minded schoolchildren teenagers have secured funding for a series of projects aimed at improving public perceptions about young people.
The teams were taking part at a Pitch 4 Change event at Austin Court in Birmingham where they had to convince a panel of business experts with a Dragons’ Den style presentation.
The event was part of a programme of initiatives by charity Envision which successfully secured funding from the Co-operative Foundation as part of its Truth about Youth campaign.
The five teams at the event were shortlisted from more than 70 school teams which take part in Envision’s schools and colleges active citizenship programme and each was trying to win £500 towards delivering their own community projects.
The teams had been planning and developing their projects during weekly sessions at their school or college as part of the Envision Schools Programme and the five teams that took part were selected for their inspiring ideas and original approach for tackling local issues and concerns in their schools and neighbourhoods.
In the lead up to the event, the teams visited local businesses including IAMCO, Severn Trent Water, BEST City Council and Packt Publishing to receive mentoring on how best to pitch their projects to the ‘Dragons’, as well as advice on how to fine tune their projects particularly in areas such as budgeting and marketing.
The day of the event saw the five teams present their ideas to a panel of local business leaders who had the final say on how much money each project was to be awarded. The ‘Dragons’ were Simon Cocks, director of Waster Services for Severn Trent Water, Jackie Ridge, managing director of Preston UK, Stephen Haselden, managing director of Ozone Bus, Katie Smith, member of the Cooperative Group and marketing manager for Packt Publishing, Damian Carvill.
The student teams experienced varying levels of success and received some excellent feedback from the Dragons, as well as pledges of continuing support from the panel.
Baverstock School pitched for £500 to organise a cleanup of their school and local area with the support from students and people from the local community.
The event would also include live music, refreshments with the overall aim of bringing the community together to share responsibility of looking after the area. The dragons loved the idea and awarded the team £450.
The team at King Edward VI Camp Hill Girls wanted to show the local community the importance of saving water by organising an event and getting people from the community to sign pledges stating that they would reduce their water consumption.
The Dragons were willing to provide £250 for a pilot run of the event and would then release a further £250 for a follow up event.
The team from King Edwards VI Handsworth pitched their idea to create a memorial garden within their school grounds to commemorate the young men and women who have served at war in the past decade.
The Dragons were very impressed with the presentation and idea and awarded the team the full £444 they asked for as well as pledging to put them in contact with a garden designer who currently has their own TV show.
