Harrow Way Students get a feel for business

This week, Year 10 students at Harrow Way Community School have taken part in two exciting enterprise days.

The first day was led by Angus Farmer of CocoMango, a specialist soap manufacturing company. After learning about the basics needed to form a small business the students worked in teams to create their own soaps. This involved selecting from a wide range of essential oils and other ingredients to create a product appropriate to their target market, then working to cost their proposals before generating publicity materials. Finally, each group presented its product to a panel of judges. The overall winners were the “Love Tub” company who designed a novel two-layered “his and hers” soap which they named “Avec Amour”. The runners up were “Frubelle” (for their soap “Subtlety”), “Soap-‘O’-A-GoGo” (for their soap “Citrus Passion”), and “Lather Limited” (for their soap “Soap Opera”)

This enterprise day is unique in that the final designs of the four winning groups are taken by Angus to be put into production at CocoMango. Once manufactured and packaged, 200 bars of the winning soaps will be presented to the school for the students to sell, completing the “for real” enterprise experience.

This was CocoMango’s first visit to Harrow Way and we certainly hope it will not be the last.

The second day was based on recycling electrical equipment. Students worked with five representatives from ShP for Enterprise under their “Think Do” project to create their companies to recycle electronic products.

After a full introduction each “company” was given a set brief to follow, including assigning the essential roles, decision making, marketing strategy, finance and finally making presentations to demonstrate their companies to the whole year group. The ShP team worked with the groups at every stage to help them throughout the process, including developing adverts to help them sell their products.

The day allowed students to develop key enterprise skills including communication, time management and team work and building their confidence in making presentations. At the same time they were thinking about and understanding the importance of recycling electronic goods.

Mr Parsons, Assistant Headteacher commented, “we have enjoyed working with ShP again and this was once more a challenging, engaging and stimulating day.” He added, “the event was a great success and thoroughly enjoyed by everyone involved. It really captured the imagination of the students and they took on board all the key business and enterprise considerations which were presented to them. I’m sure they will remember their final presentations in front of the judges for a long time to come. Many thanks to the team from ShP for making the day so successful and to Tracy Marlow, Project Manager at First Partnership, for her indefatigable contribution to the organisation and running of both days.”

The winning team, pictured left, created a company called “Black Star”, winning a trophy for their excellent work.

Please visit www.shpforenterprise.co.uk to view the work of ShP Enterprise, and www.firstpartnership.com to view the work of First Partnership (our local Business and Education Partnership).