Young Enterprise Enterprise Olympics October Friday 1st 2004
Starting at 8.30am, eleven students from the Young Enterprise Scheme gathered together on Friday October 1st to compete in the National Enterprise Olympics. The Olympics are held every year, but this year the Olympics took on a new concept. Previously, only 2 students from each region have been able to compete in the Olympics. These 2 students would travel to Wellington and combine with other regions and compete against each other. This year, Enterprise Trust head office decided each region could compete via video conferencing and the winning team would be chosen to go through to Wellington to compete internationally.
The teams were given a task in the morning (via video link) and then proceeded to produce either a product or service related to that task. The task given was ‘Find and develop a product/service that would advance the economic development of the region.’
The Southland team put together a package addressing the need that in order for Southland to grow, we first had to provide electricity for industry. Their idea was to install a second wind farm to complement the one already proposed by Meridian, only this wind farm would be for the supply of power to industry. Industry and Southlanders would be the shareholders and fixed term debenture stocks would be given to encourage commitment to the region. All this energy would then pave the way for more export, agriculture, manufacturing etc, which would then have the multiplying effect enabling tourism, hospitality and education as spin offs.
The team had to email a two-page business plan by 3pm and at 4pm be ready to do an oral presentation via video link.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make the final 3 but were commended for originality in our presentation. We also took the honour of being the only South Island team competing which goes to show, the Southland Young Enterprisers are right up there when it comes to embracing new challenges and trialing new technology. The video conferencing was done through Southland Boys High School who is connected through the Schoolzone video link.
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