Teachers Derry Morley, Millstreet Community School, Yvonne McCaul and Julia Barry Scoil Mhuire Kanturk, and Ann Doherty, St. Mary’s Secondary School Charleville, pictured with Kevin Curran, Senior Business Development Officer, Local Enterprise Office Mallow at the ‘Start Your Own Business’ Innnovation day for students from schools across North Cork, which was held at the Charleville Park Hotel Charleville.
Over 300 second level students from all over North Cork were put through their paces at a special Student and Teacher Brainstorming Day at the Charleville Park Hotel on Monday 14th September. The event is part of the North Cork Schools Enterprise Programme, which encourages students to set up and run a business over the course of the academic year to help them learn all about entrepreneurship. One of Ireland’s leading innovation training companies, QED Training, facilitated the event which gave the young teens an opportunity to learn about the most exciting new business ideas being developed around the world and how they too can learn various brainstorming techniques to develop their own business ideas for the mini-company programme.
The young entrepreneurs were then broken into groups to do some practical idea generation work to help them find innovative ideas that they can base their mini companies on for this year’s competition. In total 12 of the second level schools from North Cork were represented at the event, with students taking part in the programme from both junior and senior cycle.
Michael Hanley, Head of Enterprise welcomed the students and teachers and said, “We are looking forward to another successful year with the Schools Enterprise Programme. The Programme in North Cork is one of the strongest in the country and we are very fortunate to have such dedicated teachers who work tirelessly every year to help their students learn about the importance of entrepreneurship. The Local Enterprise Office is really seeing the long term benefits of the Programme with more and more start up businesses in the area being created by students who previously took part in the programme while at school.”
Speaking at the event, Yvonne O’Neill, Co-Ordinator of the North Cork Schools Enterprise Programme, said, ‘We are really delighted with the huge turnout at today’s event. We have over 300 students from all over North Cork brainstorming and networking with each other. There was an exhilarating atmosphere in the room here today, plenty of positivity and energy coming from our students, who are really enjoying the experience of being first time entrepreneurs!”
“It’s a great start to the academic year for us and of course we are so proud in North Cork to be the reigning junior champions of student enterprise! Our first year team of students from St. Mary’s School in Charleville took the top prize at the national final earlier this year and we hope to continue with this success with the programme this year.”
The next event in the North Cork Schools Enterprise calendar is the Christmas Trade Fair which takes place on 15th December at the Green Glens Arena in Millstreet. Students will set up stands and put their products and services on display to the public.