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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