YOUNG ENTERPRISE

The Year of GEORGE

Along with the start of a new school year, term one brought E-Day and the formation of GEORGE. Held as a regional event E-Day brings together all of the Canterbury Young Enterprise Students for a day of planning, collaboration and learning. As we headed into the Foundry at UC our minds were filled with ambition. As the more experienced members of the team Tim, Charlie and myself knew that to succeed in the world of enterprise we would have to be dedicated, professional and charismatic. For Xavier, Leon and Josh the day brought many new concepts and principals to absorb before we could meet to formulate our strategy for the year.

May brought the Regional Dragons Den Competition. As the name suggests the dragon den competition is a challenge not to be underestimated. Dragons Den, held at CPIT, was an opportunity for us to pitch our idea to a group of New Zealand businessmen and receive some ‘advice’. At the beginning of the event, one of the judges told us that to “succeed in business you have to take risks and dream big”. I guess they thought our dream of creating learning software for disadvantaged children was just too ‘big’ because at the end of the night we did not place. Nether less we walked out CPIT that night with our heads held high. What we had been told by the dragon’s den judges just confirmed my theory – having a great (and of course controversial) idea was part of the recipe but to really succeed at Young Enterprise we would have to dream big and deliver on it.

In June we began our product design and development. We partnered with Jade Corporation and with their help we began developing our software. Once we had completed our prototype we began our market research and product testing. We knew that our target market was primary schools in New Zealand and the Pacific so we contacted Aranui Primary School and began to meet with the year one and two students on a regular basis to test the effectiveness of our software. After many trips across town we had our software refined and the research to prove that it worked. Testing our software on New Zealand primary school students meant that we knew we had a product right for the English speaking market but we weren’t satisfied with that. We wanted our software to be available to anyone who wanted to use it. So we contacted Refugee Services NZ and met with a group of refugees from different nations around the world. Now we could develop our software to be adaptable to different languages and cultures.

After we had our final prototype developed into an acceptable product we held our product launch. After searching for a guest we chose Poto Williams (MP for Christchurch east). We held the event in the college library with the senior management team and other guests in attendance. Later that day parts of the event were broadcast on 3News and Prime News. Following the product launch we also had a visit from Andrew Little, leader of the Labor party. Andrew showed a keen interest in our software and the potential for application to the classroom in New Zealand and overseas.

In October we attended the YES Regional Awards at the University of Canterbury. At this ceremony, GEORGE was awarded the Science Alive Cup for Innovation and the award for runner up in the Canterbury region. We also learned that we had won one or more excellence awards and would be travelling to Wellington in December to attend the National Awards. We did not have time to celebrate however because the regional awards were being held on the same night as the school prize giving, which meant that we had to rush to Wigram immediately afterwards.

On Wednesday the 9th December we met at Christchurch airport and travelled to Wellington. Once there we had three hours to explore the city before going to Shed Six for the National Awards Dinner. Te Radar’s comical performance kept us entertained as the excellence awards we read out. One of the first awards read was the MOVAC award for high growth potential. We carried on the tradition by winning this award for the third year running. The MOVAC award is important to us because it means we have been recognized as the business most likely to succeed in the future. After the entre was served we were awarded the New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade Award for International Development. We were happy with two awards came away suitably excited.